


and tell me who is victor

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Angst, Canon Compliant, Eventual Happy Ending, Forbidden Love, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Love Confessions, M/M, Memory Loss, Scottish!Crowley, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), Welsh!Aziraphale, it looks like an au but isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25408741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: In 1347, a ship arrives bearing books and news from the east. Aziraphale, a Cistercian monk of Tintern Abbey, travels to collect his books. There he meets a lazy-hipped, red-haired sailor and has the strangest feeling that he knows Crowley, that they have met once. He just cannot remember at all.Or, all love stories are ghost stories. And to tell a ghost story, something must have happened before.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71
Collections: Best Aziraphale and Crowley





	1. In the Beginning

_“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."  
_ Milan Kundera, _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_

In the Beginning, we were nothing. A dense and compact nothing, an unexplored and unexplained thing. We lived densely and darkly, tight and loving, the atoms of me bound up in the atoms of you. There was nothing then, no space or measurement as we had no need for them (there was no space between us). We had no mouths to speak, needed no sound. Existed there in dark and endless immortality until it snapped, as all things must, and we were thrown out into the new Universe. 

That is when I learned distance (the space between us), and time (the measurement of when I might see you next). That is when we learned velocity (how quickly we are moving away, coming together) and trajectory too (are you going my way?).

Is it any wonder that when I see you, my atomic heart strikes up in recognition? Is it any wonder that I cannot breathe when I swim in the sea, roll in the grass, lick the sweat from your salted skin? It’s only us, we were darkness once and immortal, we are made of the same stuff. When we strike together, body within body within body, deep enough to count the ribs, nudge the spine, we are just trying to go home again. Light and fire came into existence when we were shot forth, thrown out to the corners of the universe. When I lost my hold on you. Light existed so that we might see the way, watch the road. Stumble on back.

What do you do when you’re finally there? When you’ve found it, when you sink together with a featherdown pillow and glass of water by the side of the bed?

Please, we don’t need it any longer. Go on, love, go on and turn out the light.

* * *

_Abergavenny, Wales_ _  
_ _1307_

“But what about Grendel?” 

He had asked the question once. He had tucked his pale curls behind his ears then. The other boys would later tell him it makes him look childish. So, he had stopped, never done it again. He had looked up at the teacher there, reading aloud to the small group of children. The old man frowned. (Was he old? He was probably only forty. Greyhaired and blackfrocked, he had seemed impossibly aged to seven-year-old Aziraphale, back in the days when everyone was divided into young and not-young.) 

“Child, pay attention,” the greyed monk had said (Aziraphale has long, long forgotten his name). “Grendel is the monster of the story, not the hero. This isn’t about him.” 

_But I want to know,_ Aziraphale had thought, _how the monsters became monsters. How do demons become demons? Where do they come from? Why would anyone choose to be a beast? What about them?_ They had stuck in his craw, the forgotten. He doesn’t understand; it rises like bile in the back of his throat, he is infuriated. He knows that monsters exist, that the Fallen chose to rebel, chose to Fall. That some men choose Hell. He doesn't understand. _I want to know. Why?_

Let me tell you then about monsters. Let me tell you about Fallen things.

It's not that simple.

* * *

_Tintern Abbey, Wales  
_ _1347_

The thing about the lifers, the monks who have been here for awhile (have gotten used to the press of a pew against their backs and the stone floor on their knees), is that they know all the tricks and little secrets that grease the wheel. The fact is that no one likes _matins_. The call to prayer goes up and each man wipes the sleep from his face, dusts the night from their stubble-beards, goes down the back stairs by lit candle. The older brothers know that there are tricks to staying awake through the prayer. Pinch yourself, yes. The thigh or the inner arm. Yawn all you like (don’t get caught). But the finest trick is to keep a bag of peppercorns on hand, grind them up with your back molars into a gritty paste. Pepper up, perk up, keep yourself focused. It’s only an hour. Once voices rise up in _Kyrie eléison,_ it’s nearly done. 

Aziraphale has been around for years. He’s quite fond of all his little habits, his indulgences, his stolen bits of wheelgrease. He looks up here at the figure of Christ on his crucifix. _A few peppercorns won’t hurt anyone, will they? You don’t mind? Just helps keep me clear, you know. No, of course you wouldn’t mind._

He bends his head when needed, rises when he’s told. Files in and shuffles out. Simply one man among many, clad in a tunic of white wool. The Cistercians, the _White Monks_ (as the village calls them). Abbot Robert of Molesme had heard the call for reform in his bones, had struck forth in 1098, collected a few others and set forth their rules in a Charter of Charity. _Carta Caritatis._ Aziraphale understands what it means to let go. To give himself up. As St. Anselm had written, "Anyone who imagines that foregoing the pleasures of the world and persevering in the exercises of virtue is extremely hard, even impossible, has never experienced how praiseworthy and delightful it is not to submit but to command one's vices through love and the hope of the heavenly kingdom."

Yes, do not think of the world. Think only of God above.

He thinks sometimes of the Beginning. It’s a strange comfort, knowing that time can be grabbed sternly by the shoulders and marched backward. We can point toward the start and say _show me what you’ve done._ The thing is, if you think about the Beginning, it’s one day after another until you reach the first of all days. A day without a yesterday. There’s a story about the Beginning. Really, Aziraphale knows that there are _several_ stories. Not all of them the same, though plenty of the beats are shared. The Church tells him how God had created the Earth in six days and kicked back on the seventh. 

Aziraphale is a churchman, a man of God. He’s a _believer_. (The trouble is that doubt shows up whether you want it to or not. The spiders creeping through the cracks in the plaster, the rain in the boat. Doubt doesn’t wait to be invited in, it has fewer manners than a vampire. No, doubt shows up without asking. When we are accused of doubting, we stand there aching and open, squeezing the doubt from our wet shirts and feeling for the cracks in the boat. _But I tried,_ we cry, _I did, I did, I did. You must believe me.)_

It is late summer. It’s sitting on that very edge, that very tipping point into autumn. The wet, hot air lays sick and heavy. The winds, when they do finally come, have a strange coolness on their backs, carrying the promise of winter from their origin. It's never been Aziraphale's favorite season, summer. It is _hot,_ it is _sticky._ His long tunic sticks to him in all the wrong sweat-drenched ways. He peels it from his back, his shoulders. _Men,_ he thinks wryly, _were never meant to wear wool in August._ He hides from the sun in the height of summer, preferring to keep to the cool stone halls of the abbey. The relief of the library and scriptorium. Tintern Abbey wears the past two hundred years in its stones, in its walls. The flagstones he walks on are smoothed already, have long been worn down by men with nervous habits like his own, men who pace as they fret. Most of those men, the old monks of the past, were buried beneath his feet under those very flagstones. Aziraphale loves to lose himself in the walls, brush his square fingertips against the red sandstone. It is like stepping into the past. (Here, history lays heavily. It creeps into his breath, it gets under his fingernails. He cannot sneeze without tripping over the past.) 

His bent nose sits square in his face, his mouth is always worry-wobbled. Age crosshatches his skin, collecting in fine lines under his chin, the corners of his mouth, the heavy bags of his eyes too. There is the slow build of a headache just beyond his temples. His stomach rumbles. He's troubling over the journey he's about to take. He'd been called to the abbot this morning, entrusted with a mission. All missions, we must understand, are God's missions. 

"Aziraphale!" the rector had called. "The Abbot wants to see you."

"Oh," he had said, fussing at his cassock and frowning. (He is no one important, no one to notice. He wonders why he is requested.) "Oh dear. Quite right, on my way. Thank you."

“My child,” The old abbot, Abel of Falmouth, had said, setting his lenses down. They are a curious invention, brought to the old man by visiting Dominican friars from Pisa. They had been made for him especially, with careful thought to the grade of the glass, the optics and refraction, by Friar Alessandro della Spina. (Aziraphale is curious, always so curious. He has never asked the abbot if he can try the strange windows on. He knows they are a tool for the myopic, he even has a touch of it himself. He wants to _know_. It's a dangerous thing, craving knowledge. Aziraphale bites the questions back, perched there on his tongue.) 

The abbot had bid him travel. A ship had arrived, bound from Coucy Castle in France, loaded down with a donation of books and manuscripts. Tintern, as a small abbey, had got the last ones, the _least_ desirable of the lot. Cluny and her daughters had already picked the list over, scavenged it clean. Aziraphale knows there’s nothing likely to be truly remarkable. Common titles. Dull things. Untranslated and untranslatable. He will do as the abbot asks. It is all they require. It is easy here; he does not ask questions. The sun rises in the east, as it should. It sets in the west, also as it should. The abbey is calm, placid as a pond. He marks the passage of time with the _Liturgia Horarum_. Up, out of bed, he greets the sun with Lauds, that old call to prayer. At six is Prime. Terce, Sext, None, Vespers. The quiet hum of Compline (the eerie midnight of Vigils). _The world is quiet here._

_Right, that's enough introspection, I suppose._ He really should be getting on. Upward and onward then. He pulls himself from the hard seat, ready to pack the few essentials he has in a bag. Not much. A change of clothes, his book of prayers. He heads down the back stairs toward the stables, passing through the cloister along the way.

The cloister is the center of monastic life. In Tintern, it is a long rectangle. The footpaths are laid out in the shape of the cross, each unequal quadrant lined with flowering plants and a fruit tree at the center. The plants ignore him, too busy with their own cycles of living and dying to pay any attention to him. He sees the lady’s-mantle, the columbine, the fountain at the far end. The capitals of the pillars are decorated with scenes not found in any Bible chapter. Wild griffons, apes, wild and naked men. Some of these appear to evoke the mythology of those from before the modern world. From before Saint Patrick had come, had expelled the snakes, had raised the cross, had spread the light and Word into these spiderwebbed shadows. Aziraphale knows that, though their names may be forgotten, the old gods cannot be escaped. It is an uncomfortable knowledge that all men in these lands must bear.

The garden is large. It is situated at the back of the abbey. The horticulturalist is young but he has an unusual knack for coaxing growth out of the hard soil, out of too-cold-winters, out of withered roots and desiccated seeds. Aziraphale goes often in the afternoons, between the prayers of terce and sext, and names the plants for himself. There’s angelica, to protect against illness and witchcraft. (Some keep it on a chain, tucked against their hearts, to keep witches at bay.) There is blackberry, for gout. Burdock is kept for the lepers and hyssop for coughs. Hildegard of Bingen, that old saint, that old abbess, had recommended to steep it deeply, to brew it into a tea. 

It is still morning when he strikes out. The cook had tucked a bit of bread into his bag. He had frowned upon seeing it. It is a simple ride, not far, about a day on horseback, yet the bread is never much.

As he draws near to Norfolk, to Crowland Hall, he crosses a small river. He looks at the water. Stares at his unfortunate reflection. It isn't much. It's odd how he can love his face, the folds and lines of it, yet also abhor it in the same measure. His rounded chin, his Roman nose. His skin, which is pink and roughened with the shadow of pale beardstart. He frowns at his eyes, this bluegunk color of a riverbottom, sand mixed with water. _Oh well._ His eyes are nothing remarkable (he is nothing remarkable). No one would celebrate them; shadows are all too common.

He looks, he knows, like his mother, who was not English. His mother, born deep in the Carpathian mountains, at the gate to another world. Who had met God through another church in the east. It doesn’t matter that he was born to Abergavenny, to a clattering Welsh town with a clattering Welsh father. The other monks call him _The Wallachian_ , they can smell the distant blood from afar. He will never be one of them. It doesn’t matter. The journey is uneventful and dull. He fusses at the horse, frets at the weather. Crowland Hall is in Norwich, deep in Norfolk in East Anglia. It is thrown out on the other side of the island kingdom, where the North Sea forms the shoreline. It has a long history of resentment and rebellion. The Iceni are from here, who had revolted against the Romans in the year 47, led by their warrior-queen Boadicea. Yet, she had died a hero, her memory carved into statues to be looked at by the ones left. The Romans had built ports and roads, had built up agriculture. This is where the Angles and Saxons would later land, invading in their wooden longships from Scandinavia across the sea. They would entrench themselves and eventually the original inhabitants, the queer Iceni and Brythonic creatures, would be lost to time. By the time the Normans would cross their shores later still, in 1066, the Anglo-Saxons would be seen as the original and rightful inhabitants, (never mind that they’d taken it also, so many years before).

Crowland Hall is in the Fenlands, a low coastal plain right on the shore. It is marshy and stormy. The alkaline water gets in everything, miserable with dead things decomposing, returning to dirt and soil, ready to start again. It’s a strange thing, to only half-belong to your land. He doesn’t remember much. His childhood is nothing but faint echoes. Raised voices, his knees pulled to his chin. Violets in glass vases. His father had been a Welshman. Through his father, the mountains echo. The rivers pulse through him as easy as blood and the sky echoes in his lungs, well-known and well-met. He is half a stranger too. There is another land, one he has never seen but through his mother’s voice. She had woven stories for him of wildflowers and blue skies. Of a lake and its island. The pines that cover the Carpathians like a blanket. He walks through the Welsh sky, this other half of his DNA singing out, this mark of other, of far away, of distant and different. He curls up around his otherness like keeping a pearl at his center, something unknown and only his. It makes him uneasy, it makes him warm. He remembers snatches, his mother telling him stories of Radu Negru, the waft of her stew, a song she used to sing.

At nine o’clock, as nightfall comes, he draws near to Anglia. A banner rises from the battlement bearing the image of three golden crowns. He draws a breath, steeling himself as he looks over the rise of the keep. It juts out severely from the flat land. Built two hundred years prior by Anglo-Norman nobility, Crowland Hall is more of a fortification than anywhere comfortable to pass one’s time. It is of Romanesque design, thick with pilaster buttresses. The town sits in front of the Hall, beyond lay the five hectares devoted to hunting. It is one of the largest hunting grounds in Britain, including a deer park and rabbit warrens which long windows look out over. There is a Norman chapel there, built from local sandstone and from scavenged Roman tiles.

Cross the bridge and pass the gatehouse. Up the long stairway of the forebuilding. He enters through the door, wide and thick walls of brown carrstone rise up above him, reinforced with timbers crossing the ceiling.

“Who is it?” a guard calls.

“Aziraphale, from the Abbot of Tintern. I am expected by Lord Wolfe.”

“Well, come on then.” 

Aziraphale nods, gathering himself up. He goes then to the depths of Crowland Hall. It is late. (He is August-hot and sweat drips down his chest from neck to navel. He is aching, bonetired.)

* * *

“There is talk of disease in the east,” the man to his right says. Yes, Aziraphale has heard the rumors. The talk had started quietly. It trickles in with the ships, with the sailors. They are safe here on the island kingdom, of course. There is no way for it to cross the Channel, to jump from Calais to London, creep from London to Tintern. No, the pestilence would not come to Wales, he is sure of it. It is only a ghost story.

“I am given to understand that the severity of the illness is only a rumor. Oh, I don't think we should fear too much. Not if we place ourselves in the Almighty's hands,” Aziraphale says, picking at his plate. "God will provide."

“A lot already died at Crécy,” Lord Wolfe grumbles, he refills his glass with wine, “disease will only make it worse.” Aziraphale watches the portly man with distaste. He thinks back to last summer’s shattering victory over the French. It had been a matter of national pride. The English king, Edward, in a hail of glory. His archers had been the ball in the corner pocket with their yew-hewn longbows, raining death down upon Philip’s men. King Edward, third of his name, who has sat on his throne for twenty years. He had risen in war, in blood, against his French mother, Isabella, and her wretched lover, that foul Mortimer fellow. The king had deposed Mortimer, had taken his rightful place, had claimed the throne and reached out across the sea with fingers toward the French throne. England has been at war for ten years; it feels rather like it will never end. He is tired of war.

There is meat there, a bit of bread. He feels strange with the wealth of options before him, laid out on the groaning long table. He plucks at his pale habit, fluffing the collar at his neck, pulling at his hair. As if fussing with his outfit might remind them of his role as a monk, that he is no one to trifle with. He is a representative of the Abbot of Tintern. He is of _consequence_. (He is, always, _always_ deep within, a plainfaced urchin from Abergavenny with nothing to eat.) 

The well-laid table intimidates him slightly. Aziraphale thinks of his childhood. He has never been wealthy, he does not come from noble stock. His blood is common. He had never tasted game until much later, on evenings like this, journeying on the abbot’s behalf. As a child, he had lived on rye bread, on barley porridge, fava beans. Cod and herring were common on his father’s table. Never fresh, his tongue is always sick with the salt of them. But here, _here_ is laid a feast for the senses. He smells the peculiar scents of spices from farther than he has ever dreamt, pulled from Xanadu, from the Silk Road. Here there is black pepper, yellow saffron, orange dried and pulverized ginger. They do not hoard sugar the way his mother once had. This is a table he's never been invited to before. This is not a table laid for Aziraphale but he can taste it here, just once, as a man of God. He can have a bite. He must remember that. Servant of God first, a man after. Forget the past, forget it all. Don't look down.

“Crowley!” Lord Wolfe calls, his face red and fat. His beard burnishes in the candlelight. A man looks up from a distant table. Aziraphale feels a jolt of something go through him as the dark-lensed face turns to look at him. It feels like discontent (he hates being surprised). “Come here, this one's here for the books,” the lord says, jabbing at their table with mutton on a knife. The beckoned man pauses. Silently, he gathers his drink, walks over with a lazy sling of his hips, a cocksure stride. Aziraphale watches with a mild fascination as a quiet mask slips over the sailor’s features, schooling them into a studied apathy. He stops in front of Aziraphale, silent for a long second. (There is the strangest sensation of being appraised, being consumed. A snake dislocating its jaw, swallowing him whole. There is, worse still, the oddest stomach-sinking moment of deja vu. Familiarity. _Have I been here before?_ )

"Anthony Crowley."

"Aziraphale, of Tintern Abbey. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

The other man laughs, "Sure, yeah. At the moment you are. That'll change." Aziraphale stands to shake his hand. Crowley clasps Aziraphale's fingers in his longer, rougher ones. For a fraction of a second, there is an odd shimmer to the air and twist to Aziraphale's gut that immediately tilts the world on its axis. It rolls through him, this sudden too-much awareness of the other man. Light into a cave, a canary in the mine singing out. Danger, perhaps. Aziraphale is good at compartmentalizing. A lean man with long red hair and a dark tunic left half-undone. This _Anthony Crowley_ knocks there at the other door to him. The side-door. No one comes to the side-door but those you like best, those who hope to know longest. Which version of Aziraphale answers that knock? A version with heat in his cheekbones and a cotton-dry mouth. A version with a sudden rush of water, a musical chairs heartbeat, clamoring over himself and his sweaty palms too.

_It's nothing_ , he tells himself. Yes, this hum of nothing stuck in his throat, stuck between his teeth like a bit of meat. Grey mutton (left out too long). He is too aware suddenly of the bags under his eyes, of the mess of his flourdust-white hair, of the lines cut heavy into his skin. He tucks his arms behind his back, ducks his chin. _Breathe in then, steady on._ Bites his lip to conceal its chapped and peeling state. Not that it matters. It’s nothing. _Remember that then, Aziraphale_. (This is the sick of it, this wretched part. That he will take this bit of nothing home with him, tucked into the pocket of his heart, jangling about with coins and lint. He will fish the memory of the sailor out later when he is alone in bed, hot and irritated, forgetting why he _does not do this_. Fumble at himself with one hand below his tunic, only remembering later, sticky and frustrated, why he should not.)

"Got your stuff at the docks," Crowley says, tilting his head slightly. There's an unexpected curve to his mouth, some kind secret-banked smile. Aziraphale doesn't know quite what to make of it. "Can take you down to the ship whenever."

"Shall we go tomorrow morning? Should be good light, I'd love to get at a look at these. Unfortunately, Lord Coucy did not send a list of titles."

"Course," Crowley nods. "Whatever you like." He shrugs. "I'm easy." 

Aziraphale swallows, uneasy in the throat. Crowley is striking. The man's long throat unnerves him and his own runs dry. He thinks suddenly of the novices who share bunks, he knows all the stories. It is not spoken of, he has never done it, he has never been offered. Who would ever offer to him? (His own reticence is a comfort, he will never be risked. _Lead me not into temptation_.) When Aziraphale turns back, he sees that the lord has already lost interest in the both of them and is focused on persuading a few guests to join a boar hunt. Crowley watches him, a smirk on the slightly thin lips, as if to say _I told you so._

“So, what do you do?” Crowley asks, dropping onto the bench next to Aziraphale. He reaches out and plucks a bit of carrot from Aziraphale's plate. Swallows it as easy as you please. 

_Good lord,_ Aziraphale thinks. He doesn't say it. Instead, he tamps his flustered blood down, asking instead “What do you mean?”

“In the abbey,” Crowley drawls, “What kind of work?”

“I glorify God,” he says (it is the usual dull answer), “I care for the library, the scriptorium, I manage the works we produce. I work with illumination.” 

Crowley raises one dark brow behind his lenses. “Isn’t it a bit conceited to think that we can glorify God? I mean, God up there, kinda a big deal.”

Aziraphale looks at him with reproach, “That smacks of heresy. If we are given such gifts, isn’t it hubris to not?”

Crowley only grins wider. "Heresy, really?" 

"You're a sailor, I wouldn't expect you to know," Aziraphale pauses, frowns a little. _Oh dear, I might be a bit drunk._ He casts a disapproving look at the wine in his hands. Drinks from it anyway. "Well, that's what I've been told. About it all. I do hope I got it right."

"Bet you're a perfect angel," Crowley says, a bit of a soft smile in his tone. "Don’t worry, I'm sure you got it right."

"Oh," Aziraphale breathes, slightly mollified. "Oh, thank you."

Crowley seems to squirm, to shrug the gratitude off. "Right, yeah. Well, then. Guess I'll see you tomorrow. She's down at the docks, meet me there whenever you're ready."

"I'll be there at seven."

"In the _morning_?" Crowley looks scandalized. "That's not a _time_! Hell. Okay, compromise then. What about nine?"

They settle on eight o'clock.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale calls as Crowley gets up to leave. “What’s the name of your ship?”

An odd expression crosses Crowley’s knifepoint face.There one moment, gone the next. The lights of the hall glitter on his lenses, catch in his hair. Warm as embers. 

“Eden,” he says, quiet-voiced. It sounds like his voice is an echo bounced across years. "Her name is Eden."

* * *

At night, long past the dinner and long past the wine, Aziraphale bends on his knees and lets his prayer drift to the sky. The hospitality that Lord Wolfe has offered is far more than he could ever expect in the abbey. See the softness of the bed, the pillows too. The thrilling pleasure of a private room. 

He will dream again tonight. (He hopes he might not. Not all dreams give comfort. Tell me of nightmares. Tell me of terrors too.)

Aziraphale dreams most nights. In the dawn, he tries to pick them apart, to press them like wildflowers between pages. To drip sap over them and capture them in amber. Dreams, as everyone knows, are always fleeting. You do not get to keep them, not all of them. Remembering a dream is like trying to grab a piece of the river. Some water comes with you, most falls away.

There is always a man. A sharp-edged, razorbone thing. Always with desire-red hair and Aziraphale pushes his hands past black robes, past dark tunics, his fingers curling around to grip at a narrow ribcage, the soft touch of loving arms. He knows that the dream will be forgotten so he tries to linger and squirrel away the best parts. The press of a mouth to his own, shared breath and shared heartbeats. Aziraphale has never been pushed down by another man in a bed of moss and lichen, yet here his mind pulls the feeling so readily. The stones in his back, a scrape of twigs. The softness of grass and petals, pulling someone loved into his own body, safe and warm. 

Aziraphale wakes up in the middle of the night, wet and sticky. Gasping, his heart running away with him. The dream like sugar melting under running water. It's getting away from him, it's fading too rapidly. He cannot pick out the eyes of the other man, the exact shape of the face. Cannot remember much beyond desperate long fingers, the way his own heart had scattered at being loved. Something about gold. ( _Where was that? The gold. I cannot remember. Why is that important? Why can I not let that go?_ )

He sits up in bed, dropping his face into his shaking hands, his sweaty palms wiping damp from his forehead. _Breathe, breathe. It's just a dream. Just the same dream. It doesn't matter. Just your cross to bear. Don't think about it. The mind does strange things._ (It is not always the same dream. It is always the same man. Aziraphale has met this other man in thousands of dreams in thousands of ways. He knows it's simply due to the nature of his work and tries to ignore the terrible blasphemy of it all. There had been a dream of the man in Eden. He had dreamt of the Ark too, something about long auburn curls. " _All of them?"_ the man had asked, glancing around at the gathering before the storm. Aziraphale never remembers much but there are some pieces he never forgets. The worst had been there, somewhere watching Golgotha, keenly aware of the man by his side. That soft fall of reddark hair, the tangled mess of it. Aziraphale always wants to touch it, to reach out and bury his fingers in it. He remembers other pieces of that terrible dream. Something of a sharp jaw, the strange look of the man in black against the desert. The sound of driven nails.)

_It is not important. Just don't think about it and it will all be fine. Good as new, quite fine by morning._ Yes, he'll simply go back to sleep. Pull the blankets over his head, his white mess of curls. Think of the treasure trove of books he might find. (He's hoping for something new, something fascinating.)

His heart is still scrambled. Aziraphale tries to shake his head to clear it. Why does it always feel like he's forgotten something? Why does it always feel like he's closing his fingers around the dream and the most important piece of all flows out, flows back, always out of his grasp?

_Tell me what it means. (Tell me, tell me, please. I need to know.)_


	2. Eden

_"Just as the oyster is safe within its shell_  
 _yet is prey to the crabs and other enemies_  
 _when it comes out, so the monk is safe_  
 _within the convent walls, but outside is_  
 _exposed to the snares of evil."_  
Alexander of Neckam

_A long time ago  
_ _Nowhere near here_

Shall I tell you instead of the past? 

Once upon a time, there were titans and Nephilim. This was before they were named monsters. Before monsters were invented when Heracles looked into Geryon’s face. Geryon had paused there, hopeful. Maybe he’d be invited along, Heracles was so beautiful. The young hero had shrugged his shoulders with his unfair, effortless beauty, had said _“God, Geryon, you’re ugly,”_ had shot him right in the face with a goddamn arrow dipped in hydra blood. There was a moment where redwinged Geryon too might have been a hero. 

Crowley still feels the tight skin on his back where his wings start. Burn scars, shiny and flat as an asphalt mirage on a hot day, a glimmer of water in the desert. He hadn't meant to Fall. ( _I just hung around the wrong people._ )

He will never be a hero. Red is only a warning. Red never tells its own story.

It’s never about red.

* * *

_Aboard the Eden, somewhere near Norfolk  
_ _1347_

Crowley is leaning awkwardly on a chair, chewing the inside of his lip. Watching Aziraphale carefully handle the boxes, the inventory of books and scrolls, codices too. 

That white cassock cuts a surprising figure in the dark room. Crowley watches, keeping his eyes as open as a snake’s mouth. He taps his fingers along to the gentle rollick of the waves, the water rocking them here on the ship.

A ghost touch of a monk’s hand here, running along the polished wood table. A kinesthetic creature, made to touch. Made to _experience_. Crowley suffers a bitter sigh. Heaven has a sharp edge, taking Aziraphale and wrapping him in the white of a Cistercian. An order built on sensory denial. Deny the pleasure of the table, of beautiful things. Deny wine. Deny the pursuit of pleasure. Don't enjoy anything too much. Not too much. Hide yourself in a cowl, hide yourself from the world. Don't think of anything but God above. 

Aziraphale touches the books reverently. A librarian's touch is a lover's touch. Graze the cover, don't leave a mark. See the embossing, treasure the spine. Vellum and parchment, made from stretched and prepared animal skin. It's always about skin. How we touch it. We are immortal and endless creatures stuffed in insufficient skin and bones. Crowley chokes on his too-much, his endless self. He had been the size of galaxies once. _I'm going out of my skin, I swear._

"So many of these are in Greek," Aziraphale murmurs. "And other languages."

Crowley leans lazily over a backward chair, his arms in a pile over the back of it, chin resting there. A few strands of hair fall in his face. He wants to move them, doesn't want to ruin the moment. "There's Coptic too. And looks like a bit of Sanskrit." 

"Oh," Aziraphale sighs. "I'm afraid we don't have anyone who can - well, I certainly cannot. My language skills are a bit rusty." He pauses, looks over. “Absolutely dreadful, really.”

Crowley smiles, his finger-drumming speeding up. "I can." 

Aziraphale blinks. "Pardon?"

"I can translate."

Aziraphale puts the book down, looking very seriously at Crowley. Disbelief hovers in the lines at his eyes, settling into the downward curve of his mouth. "You can read Coptic? And Sanskrit? I’ve worked in the scriptorium for _years._ Well, decades, really. I’ve never in my life -“

“Would I lie to you?”

Aziraphale pauses, his fingers ghosting over the cover of a book. Over and over and over. ( _You look like you’re about to say ‘no’.)_ “You might.”

“What for?” Crowley grins, a bit cocky. He tips the chair back. Stands up. Draws near the table, the open book. (A man with very wide eyes.) “What _possible_ reason would I have to lie to you?”

“I’ll give you that," Aziraphale says drily, "Not much in the way of material gain here.”

Crowley picks up the nearest piece. Ancient Sanskrit, like pulling on a favorite sweater, something put away for the summer and found again. His tongue has worn so many languages (not all of them favorites). He had loved Sanskrit. " _Tat tvam asi_ ," he reads, looks up then at Aziraphale. Hold the gaze. "Thou art that."

"How the _Heaven_ did you learn that?"

Shrug it off. "Eh, it’s no big deal. Just a thing. I've been around a bit. Knocked around a few places. Can't help but pick things up, you know." _Whether you want to or not._

Aziraphale hesitates. "I shouldn't ask. Well, perhaps I should? Well, that is - "

"Out with it, angel."

"Would you accompany me back to the abbey? To help with the translation of a few of these texts? At least enough to _properly_ categorize and list them in the library? I mean, it's not my place to ask. I don't know how we'd pay you. _If_ we could pay you, even. I'm not sure -"

"Yeah," Crowley says, "Sure. I'll do it. Why not?"

"Oh," Aziraphale smiles. "Oh, _good_. That’s just - that’s just splendid. I'm headed back today, though I suppose we could leave another day if you need to make ready. Or, I could go on ahead, if you prefer."

Crowley rolls his shoulders, tossing his hair back. It's grown rather long this century, become a bit of a tangle. The sea air does strange things to hair, no matter how many miracles you run through it. Wild and a bit salt-coarse. Waves of algaebloom red. 

"I can be ready today. This afternoon," Crowley says. "If you like."

"Wonderful." 

"Come on, then. Might as well get on with it," he says. Glances around at the room, this inside of his beloved ship. _Eden._ Quirks a sly smile. "Well, then, time to leave the garden, I guess."

Aziraphale laughs. It's a bright sound.

* * *

They travel mostly in silence. Two horses side-by-side, taking the country at an easy speed. _We'd get there a lot faster if you'd bother with a gallop._ Crowley grimaces slightly, shifting uncomfortably on the saddle. _I hate horses._ The day slips past easily, watching the white-wool covered back riding next to him. The generous sun high overhead. The simple breeze, thick with summer, disturbing the grasses and the wildflowers, making the leaves sing. They pass the cattle in fields, open pastures. Stop for a bit of bread, a drink of water. A splash of a brook to their faces, wiping the sweat from their skin. Crowley swears under his breath. _Godfuckingdammit. I swear, if they ever invent some kind of transportation where I don’t even have to look at a horse, I’ll never touch one again. I’ll build a fucking monument to whatever it is, I swear. Fucking hell._

“Aziraphale, look, if we go _any_ slower, we’ll be going backward.”

“Didn’t realize you were in such a rush,” Aziraphale says with a faint smile. “Bit of a speed demon then, are we?” He flushes, it is unfortunately _incredibly_ arresting. Crowley is fascinated. A wretched part of him wants to tease again, just to watch that blush climb Aziraphale’s skin once more. (It is like coming up for air; it is like sitting down at a feast.) Crowley can't look away from this, the way the light hits him. From Aziraphale’s face turned into the sun. He can see so much brightness in Aziraphale. It is overwhelming, he wants to shield his sight. It looks like it should burst out from his eyes, his mouth, his fingernails. When he smiles, the sun looks out. The world is gentle here, where Aziraphale is. Crowley does not understand. _What is it like to walk in the sun?_ (He has always shouldered the shadows.) 

Aziraphale turns to face him, his lips part. He licks them, ready to speak. 

_Keep your damn spine still,_ Crowley hisses to himself. 

“Well, I suppose we _could_ go a little faster," Aziraphale agrees, "Suppose that can’t hurt, can it?”

* * *

They have been riding for hours. Now, as he watches Aziraphale ride, Crowley is making a memory. Curling up around it, a dragon with his gold. An oyster with its grain of sand. Make me a pearl, cover your memory with layers. Keep it safe. Smooth it out. Mostly they go on in silence. Mostly Crowley thinks.

It's been three-hundred-and-seven years since he's seen Aziraphale. The Earth is too much. It's too wide, too open. Too many places to hide. How many questions had he asked? He's been sailing for centuries. The routine is familiar. Coming into port, asking questions. _Is there anyone around here called Aziraphale? What about a guy, kinda a fussy sort? Blue-ish eyes and blond hair. Talks like a book, full of disapproval?_

Mostly, the answer had been no. Sometimes, it had been yes. Crowley had learned not to get his hopes up. Don't pick up the trail expecting anything. Don't imagine it'll go anywhere. Finally, in London, it had hit. " _Aziraphale? Isn't that the monk up at Tintern? Sounds like him. Met him a couple of years ago."_

 _"Where's Tintern?"_ Crowley had ground out, bone-grit between his teeth. _It's probably not him. Just a coincidence. Don't get your fucking hopes up. Keep it together._

_"Up in Wales. A monastery over there. Beautiful country. I remember he was kinda odd though."_

_"Yep. Sounds about right. Thanks."_

It had taken a few (quite a few) miracles to get his ship selected for the shipment from Lord Enguerrand de Coucy to Norfolk. Another miracle to assure that the abbot of Tintern would send Aziraphale to collect. He layers his miracles, keeping them discreet. Playing them off as mischief, as personal gain. _No one can know._ It doesn't matter, he'll burn all the miracles if he must. Bubble, boil, and burn. His eyes bright, glassy, unfocused. Manic. _For god's sake, let this be it. Please. I would burn my fucking heart out._

He swallows now, his throat dry and empty. Watching Aziraphale, there in the flesh. Next to him. Coughed up by obscurity, given back. The world without Aziraphale had been a strange place. It was battered and torn. _I need you. I remember you beneath me. Above me. In bed, laid out like an autopsy, your eyes like the bottoms of rivers. Your skin, that long side of flesh, where your bones join, where your ribs flare out like a fan. Your mouth, open. I touched you and you opened to me and it was good, it was, it was, it was. I swear. (I'll fix this. I'll get us back.)_

They draw near to the abbey in the late hours of the evening, the dark night crawling up the sky. The abbey is past the village. Up a curving path twisted through a knot of rowan trees, hovering over a wide expanse of open moor. Built with thick-hewn red sandstone, it cuts an imposing figure, heavy and grey in the fog. Crowley's eyes trace the elaborate and imposing structure, from the heavy stone columns to the soaring spire. It seems to hunch over the wide, sparse field, heavy with disquiet. _Hello monster,_ he thinks. The structure is in sharp relief to the land, old stones that loom with foreboding over the horizon. See how the abbey looms, see how it displaces the dark. As they draw closer he notices details emerging from the dusk. Heavy-stoned alures, a long bartizan. Aziraphale guides their horses to the stables, guides Crowley along the paths. They pass through the cloister, where the sections of the cross intersect.

Aziraphale keeps looking over, watching Crowley. (His eyes the color of the high-noon sky, of the cloak of Mary, Mother of God.) “Welcome to Tintern Abbey,” he says, eyes mischievous, his hands rumpled, “I’m not _quite_ sure what you’ve heard about us on all your travels but I assure you that we are not _so_ bad as the Egyptians who, as Cassian says, make their young men water dry sticks for months.”

“Sounds like a real fun time your lot’s got going here. Bit of a party here, eh?”

“We’re perfectly _enjoyable_ company,” Aziraphale says, prim-voiced.

Crowley quirks a dark brow. “Enjoyable? Look, I've heard that none of you can even talk while you eat. _At all."_ He pauses, glancing over. "Is that a thing? It's a thing, isn't it?”

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale admits (a bit begrudgingly). “I suppose that meals are a dedicated time for silence. But, really, my dear, we _are_ quite jolly.”

“Sure, angel,” Crowley laughs, shouldering his bag. He looks up at the looming building. _Well, how's it go? Abandon all hope, ye who enter here._ (He's never been good at that.) The presence of the abbey chafes against him with a constant sense of wrongness. His skin prickling. A little too warm, a little uneasy. A house of God doesn't sit well on demon skin. 

"Come," Aziraphale says, "I'll show you the way." (Crowley thinks of Theseus with Ariadne's thread, spiraling deep into the labyrinth. _Let me trace my steps, don't let me get in too deeply._ ) Deep in the recesses of the east wing, the modest room suits him fine. Small with a single window facing to the north and furnished simply with a straw pallet bed. There was little in the way of ornamentation, save a dark oak crucifix. "Will this do?"

"Yeah," he mutters. "Yeah, thanks. Should be fine." 

From his window, there is a clear view of the small lake. The sight of the Milky Way reflecting on its quieted surface is like placing an oxygen mask over his face. Crowley turns and watches Aziraphale go, the steady want pulsing in him. It bubbles up in the back of his mind. It is waiting, patiently, like a monster beneath the bed to grab him and swallow him whole. (When did it start? When had it not existed? There had never been a point when he had not loved Aziraphale. Infinite love, it stretches forward and backward. _I loved you before I knew you. I knew you were out there, I could feel it in the places where I was empty. I knew the measure of you by what I was missing. I loved you then, I didn't need a starting point._ )

"See you in the morning," Crowley says, dropping his bag on the straw pallet bed. He doesn't turn around to look. To watch Aziraphale take his leave. Instead, he hears the door close and rubs the tension out from between his eyes. _Let me name you, Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate. I know who you are. I've found you._ Crowley grimaces, still wine-sour. Still a bit drunk. It takes the edge off, he doesn’t want to sober up. He wants to disappear, wants to let _now_ fade into _then. Once upon a time, I laid you down in a bed of grass. It was August too, darkly green. You reached for me and I thought we had all the time in the world, so I took it. I lingered over you, drinking at your rockpools. The brackish sweat from your spine, the thump of your pulse in that space between hip and thigh. I learned to know you by flavor. I’ve always known you by sight, by sound, yes. I learned you by touch and taste. The smell of you._

Sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand curls around himself, shatter-hard and redcocked already. Ready to go off, primed as a shuttle launch. Crowley carries the impossible weight of perfect recall. Closes his eyes and there Aziraphale is. The freckles in his eyes, his upper arms. The mole over his left nipple. The stretchmarks like silver-pale roads on his inner arms, leading to sensitive places. The exact dimensions of what it is to take Aziraphale within him, to finally quiet his starving body. Full at last. The exact temperature of Aziraphale, wrapped around him, moving with him. A home to take with him. Not all heats are born of Hell. 

He fucks his fist like biting the apple. _I shouldn’t, shouldn’t, really really really fucking shouldn’t. (God, I want. I need you. You have no goddamn idea. There you are, in the middle of the green earth, wearing a Don’t Touch sign. You’re the apple of my eye, you’re the only bright spot in the world. Let me, please. Let me taste you.)_

The linens tangle around him, his hair catches around his throat. Catches and tangles on his chain necklace. Doesn’t matter, He writhes in bed, damp and an open ache. His hand moving faster faster faster. (Wet and ruined, spilling out.) Wild yellow eyes climbing up the walls, scrambling at the bed. He takes in all bedrooms. Imagines laying Aziraphale down in each one of them, kissing his throat in every bed. 

He comes with a cry bitten into the meat of his forearm. White-eyed, blindsided. Infinite rapture for a boundless creature. His teeth dig deep. Leave a mark. Crowley shivers in the space of after, his fever-hot skin suddenly aware of the chill air. It lays against him like a sunburn in the evening. (He has never been cold-blooded.) 

His hand is sticky. His shirt is soaked. Here he is once more, making a mess of things. 

When Crowley sleeps, he always wakes up facing the window. In his formless dreaming, he always shifts toward the sun. Toward the light. He doesn’t admit it (will never admit it) but he likes the dawn best. It‘s quiet. Undemanding. Liminal spaces ask nothing of you. He watches the light climb the walls. It is easy, in this space between black and light, to imagine that nothing exists beyond this simple bed, these four stone walls. Night gives way to navy, moving into progressively lighter shades of blue as their sliver of earth passes through the stations of dawn, first astronomical dawn, then nautical, civil, and finally sunrise. (Sunrise is always a betrayal. Day is plain and stale; night leaves him tense and nervous. Dawn holds promise. It is magical; it is transcendent.) 

_I loved you and you loved me back. You said you were mine, but neither of us were up for offer, were we? They’d already dug pens out. Markers. Scribbled their names all over us like relatives at a funeral, picking over the goods. “That was mine first,” they said, holding onto you. (Onto me.)_

_No one ever asked us who we wanted to belong to._

* * *

We’ve been talking about monsters. Tell me about Geryon, let us talk of Grendel. Of fallen and monstrous things. Grendel had not been born a monster. It had happened gradually, as he sat in the uncomfortable presence of his mother’s love. His mother, who held him too tightly, who had placed words in his mouth, who had said _this is my son_ and never once bothered to give him a name. They, neither of them, had needed names until hundreds of years later when the men came and had built Heorot. They had locked Grendel out, had not invited him to dinner, and in his misery of being cut off he had learned hate, had learnt cruelty, had learned the taste of flesh and of copper-scented blood. The men had named him Grendel in their horror. They had needed something to shout in warning as he drew near. They had never met his mother, she stays at the bottom of the lake, nameless.

Crowley knows better. He shouldn’t get too close. Shouldn't let himself be named.

As he walks into the scriptorium in the morning, meeting Aziraphale and his treasure of pages, he worries that he is getting too close. After the heavy stones and shadowed corridors of the rest of the monastery, the scriptorium bursts forth into light. He blinks at the long windows, the rows of wooden desks, slanted and layered with parchment. The lines of inkwells and quills. The books open for reference and copying, sending knowledge forth into the world. These scribe-monks are the nucleus of Europe, this world here. Copy the information and send it forth. 

Aziraphale is found near the back of the room, seated at a desk and bent over a long list of black-ink scrawl. It looks like an inventory, a list of titles. As he draws nearer, he can hear the low fret of Aziraphale's voice. "This recordkeeping is atrocious, looks like a bunch of animals got ahold of this page. Who would ever consider listing the _Meditations_ with the _Symposium_? Honestly. It's really quite, well - they're very different works. Different _time periods_ even - "

"Don't think animals do very well with a quill, angel," Crowley says, slithering on up. He crosses black-sleeved arms, arches a dark brow. 

Aziraphale turns, his face bright. (It looks, if you like, a little bit like joy. Crowley tries not to think about it. Tries not to swallow it down.) "Crowley!" 

Crowley grins, slings his lazy hip against the desk. "You're damn hard to find, all squirreled away back here."

"Here," Aziraphale says, ignoring him. He dumps a pile of books in front of Crowley, in a wide variety of languages. "Tell me if any of these might be something you can read?"

"Sure." _Yeah, anything for you._

* * *

Hours have passed. It's dark out there, if you look past the scriptorium's windows. The candles burn brightly. They linger here like echoing voices. Each sipping from a wineskin that Crowley's smuggled in. (Aziraphale's eyes had lit up. " _Oh, I shouldn't,_ " he'd said, all while pushing his cup forward.)

“Have you ever - ” Aziraphale asks. The quill pen uneasy in his square fingers. Crowley swallows, lingering over the long white quill-feather. Sick rises in his throat. _I miss you. You’re right here, you’re right in front of me. You don’t know me. You don’t recognize me._ He clenches his fingers, puts an easy smile on his face. Doesn’t know whether to grab Aziraphale by the cassock, reel him in by the rosary there at his waist. Doesn’t know if he should damn it all and grab his ship. Run away. ( _No, that’s not an option, is it? I’ve never been able to stay away from you._ )

“Ever what?” Crowley frowns, spikes a brow. Aziraphale gestures up toward the sky. The wine has made his movements easy, relaxed him. There’s a glimmer of familiarity there, boiling beneath Crowley’s skin. _How many times have I seen you like this? Remember Rome? You knocked the oysters back, insisted I try them. We shared a jug of wine, we shared the same space for our knees, knocking together there. Later, as we left the table, you took an oyster shell with you and slipped it in the folds of your toga. I saw. I remember. Remember Rome? (No, of course you don’t. You don’t remember a thing.)_

“I mean, you know,” Aziraphale says, squinting slightly at him. “Have you ever believed?”

Crowley stares at him for a moment, sips his wine slowly. The candlelight catches bright on Aziraphale’s hair. There’s something of starlight there. Something that looks like a halo. “I was in a religious order once,” Crowley mutters. 

(Another story, another lifetime, wearing white much like Aziraphale here. His wings had been cream-colored, greybacked. He had had freckles of gold, lichen-green eyes. It's not always a question of belief. Crowley believes, whether he wants to or not. He had been there, watching the Earth come into focus. Had hung the stars. Flung them from his brush like paint spatter. _There you go, across the Universe._ No, it is not always about belief or disbelief. He has belief, he does not have faith.)

“Oh! You never said. Which one?”

There’s a shrug, a collapse of jangling shoulders. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, sotto voce, more into the wine than anything else. “Doesn’t matter, angel." 

"You left."

"I did."

"Why?"

 _There was a war. It made sense when it started, eventually even I couldn't tell what was happening anymore. Eventually it was just habit, fighting. Because when the Almighty said 'you can take it or leave it if you don't like it', I left it. Joined the revolt. It's a long way down, that million light-year freefall. You have a lot of time to think while you're spinning out, head over heels. If I was unwelcome, I would earn it. (I didn't burn it out properly. I should have. Instead I met you.)_ He shakes his head, jostling the wine in the cup. Drums a long, skinnyboned hand on the woodgrain of the table. Draws little circles on the surface with nervous fingertips. Look at him, drawn up in black breeches and a black tunic, sitting here with nervous-bitten cuticles. (Pretending he's never been a shipwreck. Not once. What a lie.)

"Long story. You don't want to hear it. _Trust_ me."

"Well," Aziraphale says, gesturing to the books piled around them. "You see, I rather like stories. And we do have all night."

"Do we now, angel?" Crowley asks. (If it comes out a bit pointed, it's not his fault. It can't be his fault.) 

Aziraphale takes a sip from his wine. He isn’t breathing, there’s an emptiness to the air. A pause in the melody. He looks up at Crowley, hesitance scrawled across his face. "Why do you call me that?”

 _So I don’t forget. So I might remind you._ Crowley manages a shrug, janglebones in his black tunic. “Well, I mean, ’s what you are, yeah? Told you. A right angel.” 

There’s some faint color to Aziraphale’s cheekbones, a smile at the corners of the ever-worried mouth. He looks, Crowley thinks, a bit happy. Content. (He takes the image, makes a memory, presses it between the pages of a book like a rose.) 

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathes, twirling the quill.

“That alright?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks up, pale eyes caught on his own like fire, “Oh, yes. I think it’s - rather lovely.”

A flush chases down his chest. Mottles his throat, his back. (Not everyone blushes beautifully, Crowley knows he's an awkward thing, choking on love, blushing like a checkerboard.) "Well, then. Good. That's - that's a thing."

"I do worry that I shouldn't have brought you here," Aziraphale says, frowning. He looks away. "Whether or not it was the right thing to do." 

Crowley tips his head slightly. (Wine heavy, pleasantly drunk. Enough to let the lines get wider, let the edges get softer. There's more space to step into the middle when you're drunk. To make a home in the delineations, to carve a space out where none was before.) "Told ya, yeah? You're an angel. Don't think you can do the wrong thing."

Aziraphale smiles, relief on his face. The worry smoothing out for a moment. "Oh," he breathes, "Oh, thank you." 

"Don't worry 'bout it." 

"It's just fascinating to me, you must have quite the ear for languages," he says, dragging one hand up and down the feather. Smoothing it out, coming back to the start. "You've seen a great deal of things then? Places?"

"I have, yeah. Suppose so."

"What kind of things?" It comes in a spilled hush. Crowley can hear it in Aziraphale's voice. Something he shouldn't ask, something he _certainly_ shouldn't ask a man he barely knows. 

"Oh, you know. This and that. Cities. Churches and temples everywhere, all over the damn place," Crowley says, then grins. (His dark glasses start to slide down his nose, here in the easiness of a wine haze. He sits up quickly then, pushing the frames back up his nose.) "I mean, really, it's me. So, mostly the insides of a _lot_ of taverns and a _lot_ of bottles." 

"Have you been to Rome?"

Crowley looks up. "Yeah, why?" Rome. Yes, he's been to Rome. He remembers a Rome like ash. There had been Caligula-drawn horses in imperial palaces and a bitter brew on his tongue. A surprise invitation. Crowley can still taste the brine. Can remember the gloss of the black olives, served in a terracotta dish with oil. 

There's a wistful look in Aziraphale's glance. "It's just that I've rather always dreamt of going."

Crowley is careful in choosing his words. _Pick carefully, tread carefully. (Don't fuck it up.)_ "Church stuff? The popes used to be there."

"Oh," Aziraphale says, blushing more. "It should be for that, shouldn't it? It's awful, I just have a fascination with the ancients. To look on their temples, their ruined forums. Walk their streets. I've always wanted to." 

Crowley nods. A few strands of hair have escaped the leather tie, fall in his face, his eyes. He brushes the red threads away. _Because you loved it there. I remember._ Crowley tenses. He hates this, this march of time.

 _I was soft when I got here. When I landed on this rock. And what has time done but thrown me against the rocks (against you), beating me over and over and over again? That’s how you tenderize a tough cut of meat. Slam it into something hard. A stainless steel table. Stone slabs. Icebergs and glaciers too._ _You._

_I’m soft. (Don’t look too close. Don’t look at me.)_

Infinite things cannot forget easily. Something works at the edges of Crowley’s memory, a strange seal. A lock. He is not allowed to forget. Not one drop. He watches Aziraphale, the smile on his mouth of nervous energy. A flickering streetlight. It feels like Eden, like the start of feeling new again. The dance strikes up, will you take my hand? We’ve danced before, let us dance again. _You don’t remember me. You look at me the way you did in Eden, when you did not know me. When I was your dissonance, just a black note in your celestial harmonies. Do you remember Justinian’s Rome? Do you remember the walls of Constantinople? They were ours once for a time. I kissed you there, under a Byzantine sky. You pushed me up against the stones of the city wall, thick with soldiers inside. You kissed me with the moon watching and while mosaics were being laid in the Hagia Sophia._

 _I lost you. It took me time to find you again. I won’t fuck this up. (I promise, I swear. Not this time.)_ Crowley's well-concealed eyes skate over the skin like wheat, like sand, like butter pecan ice cream. The bump of the nose. Eyes the color of stained glass, inlaid lapis lazuli tile, and lashed with long insect legs. Hair as pale as seafoam. Cumulus clouds. Crowley moves in his seat, trying to gather his long legs under him. 

"Maybe wait till this plague ends before you kick off to Rome," Crowley mutters. "Though you _should_ get out of here. S'not safe."

"Is it real then?" Aziraphale asks. "Is it as it sounds?"

“It’s really happening. Saw it myself. The real thing.”

“The pestilence?” Aziraphale’s eyes widen. “You cannot be seriously suggesting it will make it all the way up here.”

“Angel, I’ve seen it across Asia, all along the spice routes. Naples. Venice. Padua. It’s so bad in Avignon that that Pope had to bless the river just to find a way to bury the dead.” Crowley pauses, thinking of the cities he’s passed through, sick to his stomach. (It’s a terrible failing in a demon, this _liking people_.) 

“He wouldn’t. That’s not a -“

“It’s desperate times, angel."

“Do you think it’s the End Times? The way the stories talk of it -“ 

Crowley shakes his head a little too quickly. _No, got some inside information on that. I’m on the CC list, nothin’ yet._ “No, nothing like that. But it’s bad. You gotta get out of here.”

“Why?" 

_Because I don’t know what they’ve done to you. I don’t know if you’re susceptible. I won’t risk it. Can’t do this again._ “Just go _somewhere_. Anywhere that's not around a city. Look, it’s worse in cities. I've been there, I've seen it. You don't want anywhere with lots of people -“ Crowley gestures to the monastery around them. “Just go find somewhere to hide, wait till it all blows over.”

“I can’t leave the abbey, Crowley.”

“You _can._ You’ve got two legs. You just put ‘em one after another and there you go.”

“My dear boy. I’m a _servant of God_. Of this brotherhood. I cannot. I have orders. I can’t not do what I’m told.” Aziraphale pauses, teeth worrying at his lower lip. “I know my place. I do.”

“Fine,” Crowley mutters, leaning back in his chair. He watches Aziraphale not know how to fill the silence. Stubborn, refusing to do it for him. Aziraphale picks at the plate. There’s bread torn into mountains, craggy peaks. There’s boiled carrots, rolling around on the dented metal plate. There’s parsnip. The egg and its yellow secret, running all over the place. (Making a mess of things.)

“What is the life of a derelict sailor then?” Aziraphale asks in anxious humor, trying to lighten the mood. “Finding a tavern in every port? Racking up sins on your bedpost? Women?”

Crowley coughs. (Thank god for his hair, hiding his bright red ears.) “No! Well - I mean, not _exactly_ \- “ 

“Something else then?” Aziraphale looks at him, asking softly. Crowley knows how a butterfly feels then, stuck by a pin to a board.

 _Fuck._

“Yeah, I mean. _Ish._ Kinda. Whatever. You know what I mean.” 

Aziraphale looks away, back at the bread on his plate. Crowley drinks. _Keep moving, keep yourself busy. Don’t give yourself away._

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Er. About ... taverns?”

“I’ve _been_ to taverns, Crowley.”

“Oh.” ( _Oh._ )

“I’ve been here a long time,” Aziraphale says. It echoes off the desk, the walls. 

“How long?”

“All my life, really. I hardly remember anything else.”

“What do you remember?” Crowley asks. He leans a sharp-pointed elbow on the desk, dropping his chin into one hand. Aziraphale fusses at his sleeve, smoothing out an unseen wrinkle.

“Of before? Before I came here?”

“Yeah,” Crowley says, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “Before all this.”

“I recall _feelings_ , really. My mother. I believe she loved me. I can feel it. Love, yes. I remember - I remember that I didn’t want to leave.” He shifts, “It’s all so very far away though. Forty years ago! Good lord. Nothing of consequence now."

"Everything is, I think," Crowley mutters, "Of consequence."

Church bells call out, peel out. Crowley jumps, splashing the wine on himself. It splashes on his nightblack boots, stains the hem of Aziraphale's cassock. 

"Vespers," he breathes. "Oh, we got a bit carried away, didn't we? It's terribly late."

As Crowley finds his way back to his room, he shivers. The abbey is always cold, even in the height of summer. It gets into the skin, his bones, between his teeth. (He hates the cold.) Not many fires are lit beyond the kitchen, the infirmary, the abbot’s quarters. The dormitories are located in the eastern range, on the second floor. He finds his room. Collapses on a straw bed. _Sleep now, yeah? Try again tomorrow._

He stares at the ceiling. 

Tell me, how do you punish an already-punished man? How can you double up? Eventually, you get to the bone, blow out the vein. You have to get creative, find a new soft spot to poke. Get out the thumbscrews, unpack the rack. You can't throw a man to Hell twice. 

_You won't take this away from me,_ Crowley had sworn. They hadn't. They didn't. This is his punishment. To forget nothing, to always remember everything. He thinks of Atlas with a twinge of sympathy for his shoulders. Bearing the world, bearing it all. You cannot escape your fate. 

_"You'll never see him again,"_ Hastur had smirked, all that long time ago, _"Don't go looking for him. The angel. Even if you find him, promise that he won't remember you. They made sure of it. You're in it now, Crowley."_

Memory marks him, drowns him. He's moldy with the damp of it, soaked through his skin. Caught in his nose, his hair. _Once, a long time ago, you loved me._ Memory spills over, splashes on his shoes. Gets his feet wet. Spatters his legs like seaspray, like once-flung stars. Crowley knows it'll be another sleepless night. He has never slept well. He tosses in fits, turning, the straw falling out and spilling over the cold stone floor. Sleep is never dreamless. The good nights are the ones he does not remember. Usually, however, he remembers everything.

That's the trouble.


	3. Come The Rain

_"I don’t know – said the goddess – whether you loved her or not._  
 _Yet you have come here to rescue her._  
 _She will be returned to you. But there are conditions:_  
 _You are not permitted to speak to her, or on the journey back_  
 _To turn your head, even once, to assure yourself that she is_  
 _behind you."  
_ Czesław Miłosz, _Orpheus and Eurydice_

_Tintern Abbey, Wales_ _  
_ _1347_

"Please stay after the prayer," the abbot says to Aziraphale, "there are matters at hand."

It is Lauds.

Lauds is always about the Resurrection. They greet the renewal of the sun with the miracle of Christ. After, there is a quiet drone as each monk spends the next hour in prayer and reflection, reading softly aloud from their Book of Hours, each continuing prayers of meditation for the day.

And on the third day, he rose again. Christ, who had been taken down gently from the cross by soldiers, delivered into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, who had pulled the old nails out of the palms of his hands. Had pulled hard where they caught at the bone. The old saint had gotten blood on his clothing, smelling like iron. He smelled like the firing of a gun, an invention hundreds of years later (once we’d gotten a bit more efficient at killing each other). It had taken six hours for Christ to die on the cross. He’d been put up there at the time of Lauds, around nine o’clock, while the sun is bright. The crucifix hangs large over the nave, dominating the room, an uncomfortable reminder of why he was here.

He lingers with the abbot and a group of other brothers after the service. Despite the white hair, the pitted skin and wrinkled face, the age-spots, the abbot had never seemed _old_ to Aziraphale until now. His laughter, the beat of his walk, was always impish and mischievous as a younger man. Now, as he holds the letter in his slightly-tremorous hand, Aziraphale can see all the missed years. He sits in the pew, surrounded and pressed in with others.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asks. He swims in dread. How many ways can the world end? There are so many. 

“I fear that the worst may be upon us,” the abbot says in his soft way. His voice is always as gentle as cotton. Like whipped egg whites, pastel twilight. “I have a letter from Cluny. Two-thirds of them have died of the plague.” He looks up over the paper, brows furrowed. The lines in his face look deeper now, his skin greyer. “I do not think Hugh is prone to exaggeration.”

“What do we do?”

The abbot’s willowbark fingers massage his temples. “Nothing, Aziraphale. What can we do? We can pray, my son. That is all.”

“What is causing this?” the cellarer asks.

“Earthquakes, perhaps.” Aziraphale nods. He has heard rumors. It seems plausible enough.

“It is the Lord," another brother chimes, "He is punishing us for our wickedness.”

It feels like the End of Days.

Something is coming. Something big, something heavy. The earth always knows when the quake is coming, the tsunami is looming. We're the ones who don't look up, who fail to read the signs. When the water is sucked back from the beach, leaving a long, dry shore, we look over and say _huh, that's odd._ We forget about physics, the law of things. 

The water will come back. All at once.

It always does.

Something is coming. Aziraphale can feel a rain looming this morning. The clouds are bleak and heavy, nine-months pregnant with a storm. These are the sort of swollen-ankle clouds that he thinks Noah might have seen, dangerous and terrifying. _I should build an ark._

(It won't matter, will it? He knows the pestilence is coming. _Oh, it won't come to Tintern,_ he says, spilling out the uncertainty from one side of his mouth. Privately, he fears. He looks up at the crucifix in the apse. _I thought you promised rainbows. I thought you promised not to drown everyone again. Didn't we have an agreement? A covenant? It doesn't mean anything if you find loopholes. Ways around it. Doesn't mean anything at all._ )

No, it won't matter. Aziraphale keeps his hands firmly in his lap, thumbs anxiously twiddling. The bad taste of his wretched dreams on his tongue. 

Now the taste of this bitter pill too.

Something is coming.

* * *

_What have I forgotten?_

His dreams feel like forgotten things. 

They vary widely, never quite the same. Last night's had seemed as if it should have been a nightmare. 

How had it gone? Oh yes. He had been resting on his bed, turning the pages of a book. An unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar house. There had been noises out past his door.

They had taken him in the night. Turned over his table, the half-empty bottle of ale spilling on the floor like a volcano might throw ash in the sky. The bread fell, his little knife. Something had rolled under the black lean of the wood-burning stove. His face still red-lined with the folds of his pillow, his eyes still heavy with sleep. The rope had been rough, little hemp fibers scraping at his skin, pulling the top layers off like ground-up shells. The villagers have gotten rather good at this, Aziraphale was not the first purported witch they've rendered tallow from.

Strangely, he had not even been worried. (There had been a flash of a strange thought in his mind. _Oh no, the paperwork. I'll be stuck at that desk for weeks. Gabriel wants everything in triplicate._ Aziraphale still has not been able to puzzle that one out.)

They had bound his hands. He remembers thinking that he didn't need hands. He had been tied to the stake, the kindling gathered about his feet. He leaned his head back against the wood. They will go down together, Aziraphale and the wood. The torches were already lit, waiting to touch the kindling, send him off to an inferno as desperate as a love affair. If you face fire, of course, you must pray for rain. 

_Lord, send me a storm,_ Aziraphale had prayed.

Instead of a storm, there had been silence. He'd blinked open to see a raised eyebrow. Yarrow-yellow eyes smirking in strange humor. Red-warning hair. No one around them moved, no one spoke. No one breathed. Time had stopped. 

He remembers not being surprised. 

"You really owe me, angel," the new arrival had said, snapping his fingers and sending the ropes to the grounds. Aziraphale had soothed the burn out of his wrists. "Beginning to think you're doing this on purpose."

"On purpose?" Aziraphale had said, raising his eyebrows. Smiling. (He remembers feeling warm.) "I would never dream of doing such a thing. I don't even like it when you show up out of nowhere, especially as dramatic as all that - dear, have you ever _heard_ of another color?"

The redhaired man had laughed, "Why fix what ain't broke?" He'd paused, drawn a little closer. "Hungry? I could do with a pint. What's good around here?"

"Nothing," Aziraphale had said, sighing. "Quite nothing, but if you're here, I suppose you might miracle a little something? Perhaps?"

That smile, that warm smile. The man had touched him, had taken his arm, pressed Aziraphale's wrists to his mouth, took the burn away when he pulled back. Brought a different kind of burn as he leaned in to kiss Aziraphale's mouth. "Sure, yeah. Whatever you like. Missed you, angel."

Now, laying out his dream against the day, Aziraphale cannot make heads or tails of it. 

_It's just a dream. Don't think about it. Don't dwell on it. It doesn't mean a thing._

* * *

Tintern Abbey, like all monasteries of its size, is entirely self-sufficient. Some hew grain, some bake bread, some cut hair. Aziraphale writes. Mostly, he illuminates.

The library is adjacent to the scriptorium. He is in reverence here, in this place for knowledge. When he is at odd ends, Aziraphale always finds himself here. He reaches for his ink set, his hands spread reverently over blank parchment. He dips his quill feather into the ink (dark as the night). The iron-gall ink is a chemical reaction. (Aziraphale is a scholar; all things are chemical reactions.) It is made from gallnuts, imported from Aleppo. The larvae of the thing had long left the nest of the nuts, had bored out into the world, and left this curious ball of tannins and gallic acid. The novices take the nuts, crush them with mortar and pestle. Mix with rain. This is the first ingredient of iron-gall ink. The second is ferrous sulphate, commonly found in the nearby river. Called copperas, called green vitriol. Add to the mixture, stir with a fig stick. The reaction occurs slowly, gently settling from dead leaf brown into the heavy stygian blackness of ink.

Aziraphale is given most of the illumination work; he has always had steady hands. The life of a scribe is not one of comfort. The scriptorium is cold and drafty from the tall windows. Despite this, he keeps close to the windows to be near the light. He always works better in natural light. He sits at the desk, drawing the letters, dipping the pen, for six or eight hours each day. There is no relief. His hands cramp. He massages them a little, holding them over the heat of his candle.

Illumination is how he gives glory to God. He does not have much to give, only steady hands with exceptional fine motor skills, good for detail work. He starts with a blank piece of white parchment and sketches the underdrawing in graphite. Once the design is complete, he reaches for the bottle of liquid size, an animal glue solution suspended in water. He washes the entire page with the size, preparing it for gold and paint. All illuminations are polished with gold or silver. Gold leaf is always done before color, before pigment. He cuts it to the exact specifications with a knife, applies it to the parchment, finishes with a burnishing tool. Then, a basic wash of color. He mixes the pigments with gum arabic, which has recently replaced glair as the preferred mixing medium. He works with a finely pointed brush, scarce bigger than a housecat’s claw. He tips it with his mouth, dipping the bristles between his lips, wetting them with his own tongue and spit. Then come the shadows and light, giving final space and form to the illustration. Glory unto Him, God in Heaven. God be praised.

It is a sacred task. He gets up each day, wipes the sleep from his eyes, shepherds the knowledge through the years. The books are precious. His favorites are the Greeks, the Romans. (He has always been oddly fond of Rome. There's something about it, he can't quite put his finger on.) He loves the little folio of Marcus Aurelius’ _Meditations_. ( _“Dwell,”_ Marcus Aurelius, that old philosopher-king, had written, _“on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”_ ) He fights against fire, against damp and mold. The library is large and beautiful, rife with unique folios and copies of crumbling ancient histories of England, of afar, of their forebears, the early Christians. Aziraphale has made it his life’s work to replicate the knowledge as best he can. He sets the monks to copying furiously from loaned titles, acquiring like a dragon on his hoard. Replicating like DNA in a nucleus. He sets words into the library like jewels in a crown. 

He stares at his cramping, lined hands. 

It is crumbling toward noon when Crowley walks in. Aziraphale trips over the look of him. He’s striking, far too much. Even without a mirror, Crowley ‘s lazy hipped beauty is enough to have Aziraphale doubting his own hair, his wrinkled clothing, the years in his neck. When they do inevitably settle on him, across a hall or a field, he can feel the weight of those pitch-black lenses, heavy as anchors. Aziraphale studies the other man from the corner of his eye. The sharp jaw, aquiline nose, long and unkempt hair (tangled like treebranches, bright as copper).

Crowley is more beautiful in the morning sunlight than in the candlelight of the night before. _What would you look like, just like this, waking up to the dawn?_ He breathes in harshly. _Stop it, stop it. Keep yourself steady, keep your hands where you can see them. Breathe. Cast it out. You took a vow._ The life of a monk can be boiled down to three basic vows. You take the Vow of Obedience. Empty your pockets of lint and coins and swear to the Vow of Poverty. Then turn around and keep your eyes shut and your breeches done up tight, and swallow down the Vow of Chastity. They do not ask much in the monastery save complete compliance. It’s never been difficult for Aziraphale in the past. Say your prayers, eat your gruel. If asked, fetch shipments of books from across the earth. It isn’t hard. It’s never been hard. He frowns. 

(What does he know? Look here, a simple man with simple eyes lined heavily. He’s always been alone, surrounded by unhearing ears, blind eyes too. No one has held him, not since his mother. Aziraphale holds himself, holds his own. Knows not to make a fuss. Lonely children are good at finding dark corners to hide in, at making friends with rats and dust and shadows. You can make a toy out of anything. Your hands, a piece of lint, dry straw.)

"Mornin'," Crowley says, yawning widely. 

"It's nearly noon." 

"See? That's my point. Still morning." He says it with a grin. Aziraphale frowns at him (keeps a smile on the inside, turned back into himself). "Anyway, I'm nearly done with the first part of the translation. Should have it for you this afternoon."

"Oh my, that's terribly quick," Aziraphale breathes. "However do you _do_ that?"

Crowley laughs, leans on the bookcase, a smile playing about his lips. "Magic."

Aziraphale feels caught by his low, expressive voice. He shouldn’t look at Crowley like he might find gold there. Shouldn’t look at him like he’s swallowed the sun. (His own queerness had come as a horrible revelation. Twelve-years-old, already too soft around the middle. Over-large hands that never would quite fit his frame. He doesn’t remember the name of the baker’s son from the nearby village, fifteen-years-old and blond, that had caught his eye. Instead, he remembers the obsession, the need to be near, the way he collected every word the boy spoke. How seeing the boy grin was like swallowing the sun. The lousy, sick shame.)

"I'll look forward to reading it," Aziraphale says, dipping his pen back in his ink bottle. Turning away.

Hours later, deep in the midday sun, Crowley drops the first pages on his desk.

"Is this - " Aziraphale asks. _So soon?_

"Yep. First part. I'm skipping around Ovid, picking what I like. There's more to this, but here's the start." He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. Over and over and over again. "Is it - it's alright, yeah?"

"Let me read it."

* * *

_The Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice  
(From Ovid's Metamorphoses)_

_Once upon a time, Orpheus fell in love. Once upon a time, he lost everything too. How far would you go? For love. To the end of the world._

_Orpheus was gifted with song. Everyone knew he would do great things. His mother loved him, set the stars in his hair. He sang his songs by the river, there on a golden lyre. And everything was beautiful. Beautiful and flat. Orpheus sang songs of love with a beautiful voice and a blind heart._

_He met Eurydice in the rain. Soaked to the bone. Both cold, both far from home. Fell in love while keeping each other warm. Orpheus loved with all the songs he had ever learned, all the stars on his skin. He saw Eurydice there, standing before a fall of ivy, looking like a golden apple._

_“I love you,” he said._

_“I love you,” she said._

_The story could end there. It doesn’t. Not theirs. Keep going._

_Once upon a time, Eurydice stepped on an adder, felt the snake bite deep into her calf. The venom took her. It took days for Orpheus to find her, the body by the river, long since pale and cold. Three days of searching. Three days of looking, checking every garden, every river._

_“I’m coming for you,” he said._

_“Where? To Hades?” the Fates asked, bored and curious._

_“Anywhere I need to.”_

_Orpheus knew he would go anywhere to find her. Search always, look forever. To Hell and back. He’d pluck her out of Heaven too (if he could)._

* * *

The translation stops there. Aziraphale feels as if he's been stopped as well. Stopped breathing, stopped moving. (Remember a dream, a hell-haired man who had frozen time.) 

“Come with me,” Aziraphale says. Sudden and out of nowhere. Half still out of breath. Crowley looks at him, blinking. He sets the quill-pen down. "I want to show you the grounds.” 

Crowley grins and it transforms his face. "Wait. You want to go on an adventure?"

"Don't you start," Aziraphale scolds his teasing tone, “My dear, you cannot stay here without seeing the countryside."

"Sure," Crowley says. "I'll follow you."

Twenty minutes later, they move out past the abbey. Past the grove of hawthorn, past the elder too. Aziraphale chatters a little as he walks. There is something about the Welsh countryside that wells up in his heart, that he knows in his marrow. He was born here, right here, under a Welsh sky. Wherever you go, whatever you do, your body always knows where it entered the world. Always knows the way home. 

He points out the curving banks of the River Wye. The nests of a family of crows. It isn’t a long walk but by the end of it, Aziraphale is struggling to catch his breath. Crowley is widely grinning in the sunlight. Here then is Tintern Abbey, they look down upon it from cliffs over a sea of green. His heart beats rapidly and he swallows. Here, against the swell of sky and sea, he can almost forgive anything. He has a wild impulse to leap from the edge of the earth. He closes his eyes and inhales, his face burnt clean by the slight wind. He turns toward Crowley, who is watching him, a faint smile playing on his mouth.

"Look," Aziraphale says, pointing out over the cliff. "You can see the abbey from here."

"So you can." 

"It's quite a marvel, isn't it? Founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow. Much of the structure is new. The cloister, if you look here, was lengthened. The sacristry is new as well. That window there, the seven-light, that was put in around the turn of the century. It’s a fine place,” he says. It is. It reeks with beauty and oddness. The abbey has a way of making someone feel quite small and insubstantial in context. He loves that about it - he has always loved things that dwarfed him. 

"It's beautiful, Aziraphale," Crowley agrees. He is not looking at the abbey. He is looking at Aziraphale. Aziraphale flushes. A blush rises up, over his chest, his throat, knocking on his cheeks. 

"Here," Aziraphale says. He pats his bag, his pockets. Finds the secreted away crusts of bread. 

Crowley quirks a brow. "There a few ducks around here I don't know about?"

"Well, yes. If you must know. There's a little pond just around the bend. Would you terribly mind if we -"

"Nah, I'd love to. Come on then. Kick it over."

After stuffing the ducks, they sit in the grass and share the ends of the hardcrusted bread. They also share the secreted away bottles of wine that Crowley has stuffed in his bag. (Aziraphale frowns at the bottles and at the bag. The existence of the wine isn't the problem, he can justify that however he likes. They just don't seem as if they should have _fit_ in that satchel.) He studies the man opposite him. The proud face, straightnosed and strong-chinned. Crowley could etch glass with his jaw, in the late day now dusted with the growth of a dark beard. Aziraphale shifts a little, discomfited. He lingers too long over the fire-colored hair, the impossible dark glasses. The thin lips with their Cupid’s bow, the widow’s peak that crowns his face.

 _I want to see your eyes._ (It's strange, trying to build a fantasy without knowing.)

He looks away (do not think about it). Licks his sticky fingers. He tries to be elegant, to eat slowly, but Aziraphale has never been good with restraint. _It's a bit ironic, isn't it? Me, here? An epicurean heart in a cloistered life?_ There's a bit of yellow-gold butter, softened in the day's heat. It drips down his fingertips. He licks that off too.

He doesn't have to look over to know Crowley is watching him.

He can see so much brightness in Crowley. It is overwhelming, he wants to shield his eyes from the sun. It looks like it should burst out from his eyes, his mouth, his fingernails. When he smiles, the sun looks out. The world is gentle here, where Crowley is. Aziraphale does not understand. _What is it like to walk in the light?_ (He has always shouldered the shadows.) It is harder to find brightness here. 

Crowley’s face is turned into the sun. A broad grin takes over Crowley’s face. It is genuine and guileless.

"Thank you," Aziraphale says, "for doing these translations. I know it must be terribly dull. Being here, with stuffy old monks. These old stories."

"I like old stories," Crowley drawls, half in his cups. "It's not all so bad anyway. You know the whole _once upon a time_ thing. Waking someone up with true love's first kiss. _Happily ever after_ sort of shit." He grins then, "Besides, have you read any of 'em? Most are real goddamn _bloody_."

Aziraphale raises a brow, "I wouldn't have pegged you for a romantic."

"Wait, that's not. - 'M not a _romantic_ -" Crowley mutters, trailing off. His ears seem to regret the ponytail, turning bright red and obvious. 

_Oh_. Aziraphale can see it. He can imagine it. He has been way off the mark this entire time. Perhaps he has known all along, has lied to himself to make it simpler. He knows instantly that Crowley is not, as he would have others believe, a man without feeling. This is a man who feels too much, who hides it because he is _too much_ and _too fast_ and _too intense_. Aziraphale swallows, fire catching in his throat, sparking the tinder of his veins. He knows that to love a man like Crowley would feel like drowning. Water, water everywhere. ( _Jump in,_ his heart says. _Go on, get wet._ )

Crowley scowls, drains his wine. "Don't you dare tell anyone."

"My dear," Aziraphale laughs, "Who would I possibly tell?"

He watches those long hands, those skewer-fingers. _(What would they be like in me? Inside of me. How long could you go? How far could you reach?)_ Aziraphale shifts. It’s important to keep an eye out, beware of snakes offering apples. (He’d always wondered how Eve had been so clumsy over an apple. Surely, with the glory of all the fruits of Eden around her, she could have satisfied herself with _something._ But looking here at Crowley and his apple-red hair, Aziraphale swallows. Nothing else will do. No, there’s nothing for it.)

He feels as if there's something on the tip of his tongue. Something he should remember. 

What has he forgotten? The saints had their prophecies but he doubts even those. There’s no prophecy to count on. It’s strange, the only thing we know of our future is our death. Everything else is up in the air. Mutable. Changing. He touches his own soft throat. Thinks about the world. The _what_ of it and the _why_. If there is no why, no rhyme and no reason, what’s stopping him from shucking his habit off and changing his name. He pulls the wool closer, imagining a town. A marketplace. A hand on him, hot and urgent. Wishes he could be a part of it. 

Crowley looks at him. Aziraphale feels the blood clamor up in his face, his cheeks. Red as a pomegranate. 

“Why are you here?” Aziraphale asks. His voice soft in the twilight, soft against the grass and the moss. The lichen too.

Crowley blinks. “You invited me. For my _brilliant_ skill with languages.”

“No, you," Aziraphale pauses, swallows. Trudges forth. Keeps steady, keeps his steelspine straight. (He has always rather fancied that he might make a decent soldier. Stubborn and determined as a dog, good at taking orders. Doing what he's told.) " - you could be doing _anything._ Why did you agree to come here? With me?”

“It's nothing."

"Tell me."

"Just, you know. I’m looking for something,” Crowley says, shifting away. 

“At Tintern?” Aziraphale says, his voice carrying doubt by the buckets.

“Nah, well, not _exactly_. Might be in your books though.”

“I must admit I’m desperately curious.”

Crowley laughs. A gentle laugh. There’s something behind it. “Look, it's just greed. Don't get too excited. I’m just another bastard with a ship that wants to discover something.”

“Go on," Aziraphale says. "There's more wine. Here, give me your glass."

Crowley passes it over. “There’s a river I’m looking for. The old Greeks were big on it. Well, some of ‘em anyway.”

Aziraphale frowns. “Which river?”

Crowley looks at the ground, plucks out another tuft of grass. There’s a long weight of an interval before he looks up. “Mnemosyne.”

“The river of memory.”

“Yeah, that's the one.”

“Have you forgotten something then?” Aziraphale asks. He tries to be lighthearted. Something feels strangely important. He must not trip over his words, his sentences. Must get it right. Suddenly, he knows how Atlas feels, his aching back, his bent neck, terrified of a crack in the floor.

_Don't trip. Don't stumble. Don't get it wrong. Don't fall._

“Long story, angel," Crowley mutters. He doesn't move to begin the tale. Aziraphale can take a hint. He clears his throat, shifts in his position. Changes the subject.

"There was word from Cluny this morning."

"Yeah?" Crowley asks. "The pestilence then."

"Yes. I'm afraid that you were right." He sighs, "It is, I am dreadfully certain now, coming this way." 

Crowley does not say _I told you so._ Instead, he seems very resigned. There is something of ache woven in the visible lines of his face, like an erased heartbreak. Still visible if you look for it, if you know the signs. 

"I never thought the Almighty would do such a thing, not since the days of Noah -" Aziraphale says, choking over it. "Is this how Noah felt then, watching the rain come?"

"Something like that,” Crowley mutters, as dark as those imagined Old Testament clouds. “Look, this whole place is _fucked._ Right? You can see that. Let me get you out of here.”

The idea flutters in Aziraphale's ribcage, a moth near a firepit. _Run away with me. Let's go off together._ He shakes his head slightly to clear it. "Where would we go?"

"Anywhere. I could take you _anywhere_."

"What about the others?"

"You gotta put your oxygen mask on first, angel. Let the other passengers take care of their own." (Even as Crowley says this, he looks away. Aziraphale doesn't believe him. _Perhaps you could take all of us. Perhaps I could convince them to leave. To go with us. We could save them all, couldn't we?_ )

"Pardon?"

"Nevermind, just an expression. Stupid expression. Won't use it again. _Anyway_ ," Crowley continues. "I can get them all somewhere else. Somewhere safe. If you trust me."

The idea still rattles around in Aziraphale's head like a cheap toy in a cereal box. He is afraid to breathe. 

"I don't know."

"Why do you stay?"

 _Why?_ The question is the drilled-out bit of him. The infection in his chest. It’s the wasp-hollow gallnut of him, leaving Aziraphale a shell of _what_. He knows _what._ He knows perfectly well _what_ to do and _when_. But _why_ cores him, leaves him echoing and hollow. 

"I'm sorry," Aziraphale says. "Oh, you must think the worst of me."

“No,” Crowley says, ink-dark lenses looking away. (They seem to bounce, desperate to settle on anything but on Aziraphale’s own gaze.) The long hair falls from the ponytail, toppling into his face. He suddenly looks years younger. (Aziraphale does not know his age. He realizes that he knows very little about the man. _Tell me everything, please. Please._ ) His line of sight can trace the blue veins running up Crowley's long neck and into that start of a beard. He wonders what it would feel like to touch those veins, to hold the heartbeat under the pads of his fingers. He starts slightly at the thought. “No," Crowley continues. "I think you’re brave.”

"Oh, that's kind to say." 

“It takes a lot of bravery to stick to what you believe in, angel," Crowley says, soft. Resigned but warm. "No matter what anyone else wants.” 

_Oh. Oh. Don’t say things like that. It makes me believe you. It makes me fall for you. I'm falling already. (Have you ever been in love? Been loved? Have you ever felt that magic run through your bloodstream, your pores, your cells? Do you know what it feels like to think that if you could never feel it again, you would never breathe, feel alive?)_

He looks at Crowley, at his restless hands pulling the grass from the ground. Picking at it. Shredding it. He wonders if this is what it feels like to fall in love, the bright spark of him waking up like the dawn. Something warm comes over him, knitting his very cells together.

_It doesn't feel like falling. It feels like I've loved you forever._ _It feels as if you're someone I've always known._

* * *

Later that night, much later, Aziraphale spends a long time sitting in the refectory hall after the meal, staring into the aching nothingness. The fire is dying. He glowers at the embers. Everyone has disappeared to their beds but a small number who linger, draining their tankards of the hop-drenched ale that the abbey is known for. He shivers in the chill, damp air. (The abbey is always drafty, no matter the season.) “Here,” says a low voice (a voice raked over gravel and coals). Aziraphale looks up to see Crowley above him, a long, sunpainted hand reaching out to offer his cloak. “It’s cold tonight.” 

_Thank you_ sticks in his throat, dangerous as a chicken bone. 

Aziraphale takes the heavy, dark cloak. That black wool, lined at the collar with a hint of red. He is holding it before he realizes that he has even reached for the damn thing. He wraps the old cloak around him. He can smell the wool, yes, but there is something more - something that smells like cedarwood and pine, tobacco and leather. Salt. _The wind on a wide open sea._ It’s the scent of Crowley himself, which Aziraphale has only noticed occasionally and always from afar. He closes his eyes (he doesn’t mean to) and breathes in the other man. Goddammit, the very scent of the man envelopes Aziraphale with the feeling of being secure and protected. The wool tickles his nose. _What am I doing?_

(Aziraphale wonders if Crowley has ever felt love. Love teaches a man to be tame. There is nothing tame about the angular and sharp-edged sailor. Black-wrapped and insouciant, who swings his half-mocking hips like a pendulum.) 

When he finally retires, for that broken sleep between Vespers and Compline, he knows his mind will betray him. It is the worst kind of betrayal, there is nothing to prevent it. It is _inside_ him, it is insidious. Cut it out then, please, and restart. _Crowley, Crowley Crowley. What are you doing to me? I have never felt like this, not like this. Never._ It is sweltering, his clothes are always too tight. When Crowley is near, Aziraphale can feel the gallop of his heartbeat. _Please,_ he is desperate enough to pray, _please, please, please._

This is a sin. _But what isn't a sin?_ He is quiet in the way the fabric shifts, in his movements. It is not so hard if you keep the arm still and the movement in the flick of your wrist. Imagine it, Crowley’s hand. Strong and thin fingers and oval, cuticle-bitten nailbeds. That scar on the side of his thumb. Maybe he’ll take Aziraphale tight, wrap his fingers around the base of his cock, palpate the shaft. Give a firm tug once or twice like pulling on a cord. Maybe he would be soft and teasing. Dance his fingertips over the hot flesh like ghosts, the dance of spiders. 

_Have you ever done this before?_ He cannot decide if he wants Crowley nervous or forthright but either way, he sees the other man drenched in lust, his unknown eyes massive and shattered in desire like craters, looking at him as if he might be the only thing in the world. _You and I together on the last night of the earth._ Lubrication isn’t really necessary if you go slow, do it like this, let your mind do the work, let your fingers graze. Then take that leak from the tip, clear and slick and smelling like the ocean (that salty grave). Slide it over, up and down, that’s right. Just like that. Do it so tight, hard against your own hand. There are no bones in his dick, humans are strange like that, but it feels just like there’s one, hard and about to break, stuffed just inside. He is good at this (he has had a lot of practice), yes, he knows just how he likes it. 

The parade of fantasies comes, visions of Crowley above him and below him. Everywhere, all at once. _I want you, oh fuck, the way I want you isn't right. I want to take you apart, I want you to take me apart. I would swallow you down, my nose against your stomach, your cock hot in my mouth. What do you smell like up close? Like earth, like parchment, like horsefeed? Are you also doing this, do you tease yourself? Are you quiet? Are you loud? Do you feel shame, like I do? (You should never feel shame, you are perfect.)_ He flicks through the images as quickly as he fucks his fist. When he’s on the edge, he pulls out his favorite. Crowley, there, naked and under the stars, head punched back into the ground and a wide moan on his mouth, eyes shut tightly, screaming his name while Aziraphale is buried so deep inside him, pulsating and coming like a quasar, their flesh fusing with brightness and heat down at the cellular. Come together and never apart.

His hand is sticky. It takes a long time for sleep to come. Aziraphale knows he will dream again. He isn't certain how he feels about that. He watches the sky through the small window. Aziraphale would like to go to the stars, up in the black blankness of space where there is no atmosphere. It is a void, with no medium, no vibrato atoms nor molecules to transfer sound or heat. It is absolute silence. He has never had a life without the voices of others. He would like to hear the silence. Look at the sky, his ever-beloved constellations. That old snake, Serpens, slithering in the dark like it’s cool grass. 

There is no path up to the stars for mortal men. There is no way forward for this foolishness of his heart. _Why doesn't matter,_ he tells himself. _You already know the what of your life. You know what to do. Follow that._ _He doesn’t like you that way anyway. It doesn’t matter._

_Doesn't matter._


	4. The Story of Red

_"_ _You belong to the gang_  
 _And you say you can't break away_  
 _But I'm here with my hands on my heart_  
 _And our families can't agree_  
 _I'm your brother's sworn enemy_  
 _But I'll shout out my love to the stars "  
_ The Decemberists, _O Valencia_

  
  


_Constantinople  
_ _1040_

Once upon a time, Crowley had been a lyre player.

"Oh, you're so good at that," Aziraphale had murmured, leaning his head against Crowley's shoulder. 

It is 1040. Somewhere, far away, Peter Delyan becomes tsar in Belgrade. Somewhere still further, Macbeth slays King Duncan. Nothing notable, not in the grand scheme of things. All names will be forgotten someday. Crowley has always been inclined toward spareness, they've come up here to the second floor where no one is watching. From the open arched windows, sounds can be heard coming from the small courtyard below, the street out front. Hear the child leading goats, a woman carrying water. Someone is scribbling dirty words into a brick with a penknife. Same old, same old. Nothing new under the sun.

"Nah," Crowley said, dropping his forehead against the white mess of curls, "Nah, m'not." He'd flushed a little then. Praise is heaven-speech, meant for holy things. For good things. Not for a hellbound heart. Not for a demon who can still hear the whistle of wind past his ears as he'd Fallen, that million-light-year swan dive into a pool of boiling sulfur. 

(What had Michael said as she'd run him through with her own flaming sword? There in the spot under his left clavicle, trying to cut the heart out of him? _You've brought this on yourself, you know._ She'd smiled, knowing that she'd done her duty. Had cleaned up the mess in Heaven, swept it all out and taken the rug out to beat it too. 

It had taken such a long time to hit the ground.) 

_Don't tell me I'm good. If you do, if I agree with you, the universe will have to balance itself. Take something away. Don't ruin this, it's good what we have, yeah? Don't push for too much (we've already taken so much). You can only steal so much sand from the shore before you find the water table, before the waves come rushing in, crash the castle down. Don't tempt fate, angel. Don't ask me to._

_Don't tell me I'm good. (I can't bear it. You can be good for the both of us.)_

"You _are_ , darling," Aziraphale had said into Crowley's neck, pressing the love there with his tongue.

"You're full of it, that's what you are."

Aziraphale twisted and looked up, placing one hand high on Crowley's thigh. (Crowley had plucked uselessly at the lyre strings, forgetting his place.)

"You are," Aziraphale said, something wicked in his smile, "and I'm going to show you _exactly._ "

Straw-gold eyes had widened, snake shot and once-beloved. He had let himself be pressed back into the bed, the cushions. Aziraphale's hands had played him well, always knowing where to press and where to pull, which strings to pluck to make him cry out, bite the pillow, to bring Aziraphale closer closer closer. _Kiss me now, kiss me always. Kiss me, please. Let me love you like this._

These beloved hands, this beloved angel, who had laid here beside him. Crowley had smiled (he cannot help it), looking into those eyes as blue and gold as the mosaic tiles of the Hagia Sophia. Crowley has never walked in the walls of the cathedral, not since it has been dedicated and consecrated, but he knows how Aziraphale loves to go in the mornings. To sit and to be silent, to bless those to come to pray. An angel never at rest, always watching over them, wings unseen and ever-outstretched. Crowley could not come in but he had tempted a saint to write a poem to the cathedral. _A poem for you, though you'll never know it,_ he thought, remembering an ode to a church. An ode, perhaps, to something more golden and brighter still.

_Whoever looketh with a mortal eye to heaven's emblazoned forms._

Crowley brought Aziraphale's left hand to his mouth. Kissed each of the fingers, each of the knuckles, never missing a drop. On the fourth finger, he had hesitated. He lingered over the gold band, simple and unadorned, warming the metal up with his dry lips, his chapped mouth. This gold ring, nothing noticeable, nothing that might stand out. The strength of this band is that it does not stand alone. Rather, it is part of a matched set. 

The other sits on Crowley's own finger, placed there centuries ago by Aziraphale's own shaking hands. ( _Y_ _ou slept in my arms all night. You didn't often, we tried not to make a habit of it. I remember the morning after.)_

The morning after. Crowley had crossed the street, still wiping the sleep from his eyes and hair from his face. His skin still singing with Aziraphale in the cells of him.

"Look what the cat dragged in," a slick voice had said. He'd know Sandalphon's oily cadence anywhere, the slime of the beast. 

"Sandalphon," Crowley had grimaced, "Why don't you go grease the bloody air somewhere else?"

"We've been thinking that there's too many demons around here," another voice had come, sliding up behind him. The scarred tissue on Crowley's chest would know Michael anywhere, across any stretch of time, any shard of any Universe. _You didn't get all of it. Didn't cut all my heart out. You're shit with a sword, you know that? Look what a mess you've made._

"Michael," Crowley arched a brow, turning. "What an unexpected delight. You should have let me know you were coming. I'm afraid we're fresh out of room, you'll have to book another time. Maybe the spring? It's lovely here in the spring, lots of -"

"Shut it, Crowley," Michael had said. Ice in her voice and a wineskin in her hand, the neck of it dripping with crystal-clear water. Crowley's blood plummeted. "Oh," she says, "you understand now, don't you?"

There had been a shuffle and a sound behind him, a cold flash of recognition at a stumble. An intake of breath. The flash of Michael's eyes, the awareness dawning in Sandalphon's own.

"Crowley!" 

Crowley had winced. _Don't call out for me. Don't say you know me. Don't. You cannot. Please._ Crowley has never known what had happened next. _Was it my fault? Was it theirs? There was a flash and a splash. Fire everywhere and water like blood on the ground and you had fallen, I couldn't get to you. You were there in a pool of holy water and I couldn't get close. Not even a fucking inch closer to you._ He had stared in horror at Aziraphale's unconscious body on the dirt, struck down by a miracle, the fire creeping closer. Crowley knows how fire can break a man. He has never needed to consult second-hand accounts. Conflagration. The fingers of the fire may not reach skin but death can instead travel on its breath, on the back of smoke. The burns are hidden away, tracing mandalas down an esophagus, spinning cartwheels in a nasal cavity. 

_"Aziraphale!"_ He had screamed, dry-throated and dusty. Crowley had been burning but it didn't matter. Hellfire never mattered, not to him. His skin had crawled. His hair, already as red as a portent, had caught on fire. It snaked from him monstrously. His black lenses shattered on the stone. 

Aziraphale laid there, eyes closed and breath shallow, in a pool of blessed water. (Water, water everywhere. Not a drop to touch.) 

Michael had gripped Aziraphale's blank form by the upper arm, smiling at Crowley all the while.

"We'll be in touch," she'd said, snapping her fingers. And they'd gone. Vanished. Nothing left but smoke and damp.

Later, days later, Crowley had seen something glinting in the dirt of the road, there between stones and dry grass. A simple gold band. He'd picked it up and stared at it for awhile, turning it over and over again in his long fingers. The metal was cold to the touch (there was no skin to heat it, no heart to measure). He had slipped it onto the chain around his neck, next to his own that he now wears quietly here. Secret under his dark tunic, their two hearts, quietly put away from view.

He'll keep them warm with his own body. His own skin. 

(Crowley would not go unpunished. Beelzebub had been grinning when they'd appeared. _It's up to us to punish our own. My, my, my. What are we going to do with you?_ Crowley had lied through his teeth, claiming to have been trying to corrupt Aziraphale with his brimstone-hands, to drag the angel down with him, trying to tar his wide, white feathers. Some had bought it, others hadn't. Beezlebub had not looked convinced. _Don't go looking for him. They made him drink from Lethe, he won't remember you, Crowley. But you, let's try something else. You aren't good enough to forget._

So Crowley has forgotten nothing.) 

* * *

_Tintern Village, Wales_ _  
_ _1347_

"You look distracted, my dear," Aziraphale says, grinning in the midday sun. They wander through the market. Through farmer-piled carrots and turnips, hand-woven blankets. Fresh churned butter and creamline milk. Children linger around a puppet show, sausage dry in the open air.

"Just thinkin'." Crowley shrugs, his hands shoved in his pockets. His stride long and lazy.

"Mind if I ask what's caught your fancy?"

_You. Always you._

"Nothin' important. Just remembering some time I spent in Constantinople. Markets. You'd like 'em."

"You've been everywhere, haven't you?" Aziraphale says, a bit wistfully. They walk further. At the edge of the market, a crowd has gathered around a platform. A man stands there, face turned defiantly toward the sky, rope at his throat. A hanging. Aziraphale fingers his neck. (The chain and their own rings lay heavy against Crowley's chest, rising and falling with his breath.)

"Everyone's just here to watch him. And to smirk," Aziraphale says, not turning from the executioner's display. 

"It's your lot who put him up there," Crowley mutters. Golgotha sits like a bitter pill at the back of his throat. He doesn't look away either, squinting against the sun. Something immortal and challenging in his blood. _Do you remember standing like this? At a crucifixion in Golgotha, the smell of iron and blood, the black-red lilies that grew in that Levantine desert. I wore black and you were in white, nothing much has changed. We bore witness to what was done. Here we are, once more, bearing witness. Never spilling a drop._

"I wouldn't have - I'm not - " Aziraphale doesn't finish the sentence.

"Consulted on policy decisions?" (God, what an echo is here, in this market, before the noose.)

Aziraphale nods, there's a grateful curve to his brow, thankful to be understood. He clears his throat. His voice, when it comes, is uneasy.

"I had a dream rather like this."

"A dream?" Crowley spikes his own brow, tosses it up. Shoves it like a head on a pike. 

Aziraphale nods, half-lost in memory. "I'd been captured. Taken from my bed and tied to a stake. I believe they intended to burn me for witchcraft."

Crowley nods, offering only shoulder-shrugging silence. That _wasn't a dream. That wasn't a dream at all. You were living in Wessex for some blasted reason, some miracle-work you had to perform. I'd been spending time in Kiev. Do you know what it feels like when ice climbs your legs, your muscles, your veins? It's like hitting a patch of black ice, your stomach drops even before you start to spin out. I try to do what I can, try to throw salt and bleach on the ground before we go anywhere, but black ice is hard to spot. You can't predict everything, can't protect everything._

_Two-hundred years later, I failed you. In Constantinople, just outside my own fucking door._

"I wasn't afraid," Aziraphale says. "In the dream. That was the strange part."

"Well, you know. Dreams are weird," Crowley says, shifting uneasily. The sun is too hot. Too fucking hot. "Can't trust 'em. Just your subcon-"

"Someone _saved_ me."

"Well, that's a lucky -"

Aziraphale turns, looking directly at him. "He had red hair."

Crowley nods, keeps his swallow at bay. Keeps himself perfectly still. "Huh. Nice."

"Have I been dreaming of you?" Aziraphale asks. "This was not the only time, my dear. I'm rather, well," he pauses, breathing in his courage. "I'm certain it was you."

Crowley's fists curl, tightening at his sides. "How the _fuck_ would you be dreaming about me, angel?"

"I don't know," Aziraphale whispers. He doesn't have the decency to look away. To allow Crowley a reprieve. 

"How long?" he asks. _How long have you been having memories? What else have you remembered? What's bleeding through?_

"All my life."

"Oh," Crowley says. "That's weird, I guess." _Love is supposed to be a happy thought_ , Crowley thinks and realizes how wrong he’s been. Instead, his heart clenches within his ribcage and there is no salve that can give it comfort. He has lived always hearing that it is better to have loved and lost but now, standing next to an Aziraphale that he cannot reach for, he knows this is a bald lie. No, it was better before he knew the pressure of Aziraphale's grip, before he had carefully cataloged the way his blush crept past his collar down his long neck. No, it is better to have known nothing and wished than to have had and lost.

“Who are you?” Aziraphale whispers, his eyes burn. Coals in the light. "I _know_ it's you. I'm not an idiot, Crowley. I can feel it. It's you. It always has been."

Crowley swallows. "No, you're not. Would never - look, you're one of the smartest people I know, angel." _The best person I know._

"Tell me."

"They're just dreams, yeah? I don't know anything about dreams," Crowley mutters. He makes himself as silent and unobtrusive as possible. His heartbeat sounds loud enough to wake up all of England. His jaw clenches, his molars might crack.

"Don't you?"

(Crowley's hands wind tighter, miserably empty. _Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings_.) Aziraphale is so close to him. The scent of his hair catches on the wind. Salt and damp, a bit of sweat. The wool smells different this century, echoing with iron-gall ink and gum arabic, but the fundamentals stay the same. When Crowley smells Aziraphale, it is always built on the foundations of Eden. Just his body, just himself. Aziraphale gives him a long searching look (those eyes like peacocks, like lapis lazuli). 

In the Beginning, there had been a Garden. They had both been on apple tree duty. The world had narrowed to just this one point, a spill of green upon God's unwritten earth. It had felt like no one was watching. 

_Let me write you a love poem._

_I am not good with words, I am a borrower of words. A magpie. A scavenger. I keep them here, under lock and key, in the library. I will use another language, of Abelard to Heloise. All plants move. We do not see them creep, they are very slow. They operate in a different measure of time, to them we appear impossibly fast. I will be slow with you, my long hands like ivy, Hedera genus, will curl around your ankles, up your legs. My stems, my shoots, heavy with chlorophyll and needy, running over your body. I will be as soft as a leaf when I touch you, open you up like a flower._

_Sometimes, people love monsters. It is not common. It is always a horror story. Why did Phasiphae kiss the bull? Did you see the wretched horror they unleashed into the world? If I touch you, what punishment would come down about us? I cannot risk it. Do not. Go, leave. Do not look back._

_Neglect. I miss how you smell. Your taste. I can see pale blue things (eyes, your eyes) in my memory but the specifics are missing. I have caricatures. Generalizations. The water is cold, murky. The color of your hair, pale as spiders' webs and dandelion spit. Starstuff. Lakemoss. Pale like alewives. I attached to you. Zebra mussel to the hull of a ship. Ballast. Poisoned. Infected. Let me start. I want to rebuild you, atom by atom. I will thread atoms to molecules, molecules to cells. Lay the structure of your bonework, your nervous system, capillaries, your sinew, and musculature. Flesh, teeth, bile. I want to know you like a recipe. One part hair, three parts strong thighs. Sea anemone, smelling of salt air. Let me write you a poem. I want to make love to you the way a virus does. Crawl into you, singular, unnoticed, unobstructed. I will enter your pores, your cells, lick your DNA and imprint myself upon. Replicate until I am filling you and full of you. One body, indivisible by God._

When he casts back he's not sure when it started. Earlier, perhaps, than he'd like to admit. Probably Eden, if he's honest with himself. Yes, Eden, when Aziraphale had given away a flaming sword to keep an expectant couple warm and hadn't thought twice about himself. 

Aziraphale had been nothing like the rest. _You shouldn't've been so beautiful._ At first, he had considered the angel. Then momentary thoughts had crept in. _Those eyes are looking very blue today. Do you blush all over?_

Crowley isn't sure what they've done to him. If he's lived multiple lives in the three-hundred-and-seven years of their separation, if he has only lived once and had his memories reset over and over and over again in an endless Sisphyean cycle. (Crowley lives in terror of memory. Aziraphale looks at him with blank eyes, fresh eyes, remembering nothing of their past. What if this is not the first time Crowley has found him? What if they have found each other over and over and over again in a hundred different lives, each time having the memory of their love plucked out like Prometheus' liver? What if this is not the first time? What if this is not the last?) 

"Not here," Crowley says, glancing around them, the press of bodies here at the market, thirsty for blood. 

Aziraphale nods. "Yes, not here. Find me tonight."

* * *

It is well past ten o'clock. Dark now, even in midsummer. Night lays steadily over the abbey and the countryside, starlight glimmers on leaves and branches. The nearby river too.

On his way out of the abbey, Crowley stops in front of a statue of Mary, carved in limestone and given to the abbey by visitors from Bohemia. It is done in the style of the Italian _Pieta_ or the German _Vesperbild_. Mary, crouching with her long folds of fabric tumbling about her, the body of her child removed from the cross, lain into her arms and death’s alike. It is difficult to fathom, the Virgin in her grief. Her face turns to the viewer with eyes closed in despair, yet solemn. The detail work is finer than usual. He eyes the puncture wounds in the relaxed hands, the cascade of fabric, set of the jaw. It is an increasingly popular image for artists. There are a few more of these _Evening Images_ , as the scene is called, scattered about the monastery. This one though, just outside of the chapel, is his favorite. _You're supposed to give comfort. Do you give it to everyone? I'm not your child, I won't ask you for anything. But if I did, would you even look at me? (What about the outcasts? The unacceptable? The too-much and the not-enough? What about them? What about me? Who do I go to?)_

Something is coming. Crowley can feel the whip of death on the back of the wind. He had chased the sunset west, trying to get away from it. 

It had struck quickly. Crowley has seen it all. They die in their beds. He can smell the sick from miles away, ever creeping and ever cloying. He stuffs bits of cotton in his nose, desperate to stave off the foul miasma. He knows that if the stink touches him, Death with his scythe will follow shortly after. There is no hope for plague, there never has been. Even Hippocrates and Galen, those colossal giants of medicine, give little guidance. They tell him to give up the ghost, abandon all hope. _Cito, Longe, Tarde_ are their words in Latin, which Crowley knows intimately. It is never far from his mind. “Leave quickly, go far away and come back slowly.”

He could leave if he wanted to. Run, run, Crowley, far away to where the pestilence is not. If you can keep running, then Death cannot keep up. But Death and Pestilence, those old foul horsemen, are quick runners. There is nowhere they are not already. He has nowhere to run. The putrid condition had poured in from the east, from Issyk-Kul, cradle of the black plague. It is marked by dusky stains, subcutaneous hemorrhaging. You can smell it in the decomposed. In the pomanders that the frantic carry to keep the foul air away. Juniper, ash, vine, rosemary. They write rules, guidelines for how to keep the body healthy and free from the disease. They do not eat fish from the sea, swallow their eggs cured in vinegar. Leeches are applied carefully to the ill, bleeding the sick out from their veins in red threads of wretchedness.

He likes to pause on the stairs where a large painting of the Crucifixion hangs. How is it possible to cease existing? What animates us? How does a body fall apart in the water? Is it the flesh first - bloated and pale? The lips purple, the skin begins to peel away from bone, calcification. The mouth then opens into that great scream of nothingness. On the ocean floor there, in the sand, come the vampire squids and carpet sharks to eat the cheeks, sweetest of all, and nudge the joints. Disarticulation. Out of place and out of time. After death, are you still aware, do you still watch as your eyes are swallowed by eels? Do you see the inside of the belly of the beast? (He has caused death, seen death, and craved death - yet he still does not understand death. The cold finality seems perplexing. He looks for the dead around corners, expecting their voices.)

Crowley has gotten commendations for this. For the chaos and the mess. On ships, he slips into the sickrooms wearing the long beakmasks of a plague doctor. He follows the rot-scent of the hopeless cases, the already-ruined in their beds. He applies leeches to those who are beyond saving. He stops their hearts, ends their breath. In a butcher's kindness, Crowley can hide his own mercy. He had learnt to be quick and forceful in his movements with the knife. He knows how to keep a slice clean, so it would not be infected and would heal well. He knows how to cut the carotid effectively so a man would bleed out in seconds. Crowley does not have much kindness to offer but this is what he can give - a clean death, a quick death. He can dispatch a man as effectively as a cook takes a lobster. No one can save everyone, all men must eventually die. Crowley has watched Death hover in so many rooms. 

"Do you mind?" he had snapped once, breathing heavily, tired of it all.

"NO," Death had said, patient as ever. "I NEVER MIND."

Crowley makes it painless. It's all he can do with his demon hands. If someone has to wear the sick, get the blood under their fingernails, it may as well be him.

Monster.

(It is not fair, monsterhood. He had thought that to be a monster was to have agency, to be the actor in the poem. Monsters are free to pursue their dreams, their desires. It is the hero that is the villain, who punishes Geryon for daring to be quiet, daring to love thunder, to feed his cattle and go on Sundays to the market. He did not realize that it is the other way around, monsters are always a reaction to the hero. They are set up by fate to be the foil in someone else’s story, vanquished and moved on, forever forgotten. Most do not have names. Chimera, hydra, dragon. He is lucky, at least, he has a name. It is sour and harsh, picked out of the gutter along with his yellow-bellied self. But it is there, both syllables. He has a name.)

Crowley shifts on his pivot-hips, hoisting the satchel higher on his back. He brushes the loose hair from his face, strands as red as embarrassment. Red as guilt. Unties the leather throng and does it back up again, tighter. _Keep it together. Don't be a wreck. Not now._

He has something to do.

Outside, just along the long walls of the abbey, he picks up a small rock from the ground. Peers up at the long windows of the scriptorium. A single candle burns there, near the back. Only Aziraphale has the habit of keeping late nights of parchment and pen. Crowley throws the stone on the window. 

A blond head comes to the pane of glass, looking doubtfully down. Crowley gesticulates wildly. Waves a bottle of wine like a flag. Even from the distance, even dark against the candlelight, he can see the stolen smile on Aziraphale's mouth. Aziraphale holds up a finger, mouthing to him. _I'll be right down._

Crowley has brought a wool blanket. Has packed apples and pomegranates. A little knife to cut them with, several bottles of miraculously good wine. When Aziraphale makes it down here, across the patch of earth, Crowley hands him one of the bottles.

"How many did you bring, my dear?" Aziraphale asks with something of mirth in his voice.

"You'll find I'm full of surprises."

"So you are."

They sit in silence for awhile. Aziraphale trades stories of the abbey for bites of the yellow-red apple. Crowley cuts the fruit with a knife, thumb to the blade, peeling the skin too. He cracks the pomegranate wide. Aziraphale blinks. 

"Is that - "

"Pomegranate."

"I've never tried one."

"Gotta be careful," Crowley winks, his heart a stone. "The last person who tried it had to stay in the underworld for half a year." 

"Are you threatening to keep me with your foul wiles?" Aziraphale asks. There's something of humor in the mouth, something dangerously serious in his eyes. Treacherously warmth shifts in Crowley's stomach, licks up his spine. _You used to tease me like this, a very long time ago. You're dreaming. Is it breaking through? Are you remembering me? Will you ever?_ Crowley holds the bag with the bottles of wine close to him. There's one in the bottom, one he has not yet opened, one he has not yet given over. Wine brewed an ancient way, Roman and thick. Made to be cut with water. Crowley has cut it with the river Mnemosyne. 

He hasn't opened the bottle. Not yet. 

_Maybe tonight. I'm going to try, angel. Gonna try, I swear. I told you when I put that ring on your finger that no matter what happened, I'd find you. I'd come for you. You said the same. I'm here. It took three-hundred-and-seven years but I found you._

_I never stopped looking. Please know that. Please._

Aziraphale is so close to him. His hand rests on the grass. He could lift it, start this. Crowley feels an odd sense of reluctance to break the moment.

"Thank you." Crowley can hear the thickness in the other's voice, rich like velvet. Aziraphale's sky-spattered eyes stare intently at him, bright with something Crowley doesn't dare to name. Suddenly his skin is far too tight for his body and his scalp prickles.

"For what?"

Aziraphale just shakes his head. Smiling, stars glittering in his nebula eyes. “I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says. “I believe I’ve forgotten myself.”

"Nah," Crowley murmurs. "Don't worry. S' my fault." Something impossibly soft is in Aziraphale's face. When had the start of a beard begun on that pale face? The shadow hints over the bottom half of his face and Crowley feels a low pulse of arousal shoot through him. The other man is a study in contrasts, plain and yet equally unforgettable. (Crowley cannot forget him.) 

"Not only you," Aziraphale says, his voice low. His eyes do not leave Crowley’ lips. He finds his mouth watering. He wants so much. (He is not allowed.) Aziraphale turns to face him, his own lips part. He licks them, ready to speak. Crowley will never know what the boy was about to say. He surges in like a wave, slotting Aziraphale’s mouth into his own. It is impossibly hot and Crowley moans into that mouth, into Aziraphale who swallows it down. Aziraphale’s compact hands grip at him, leaving a trail of bruised fingerprints in their wake. (Later, when Crowley peels off his tunic, they will mark him like a map of the places Aziraphale has visited. _This,_ the marks will say, _this is where I have been._ ) His hands wrench up from Aziraphale’s shoulders, cup the heart-shaped face, pawing at the flesh like clay, up into Aziraphale’s spiderweb hair. Aziraphale keens into his mouth, _yes yes yes Crowley yes,_ and he is suddenly, dreadfully aware of the heaviness between his legs, hard as stone. Aziraphale is pressing into his thigh, the tensed muscle, slightly rocking and whispering promises.

He breaks away, one hand to Aziraphale’s chest. An angel is gulping oxygen, his eyes like planets. His hands still cling to Crowley’s tunic, tangled in the folds, holding onto him like a tether. He is terrified (he kissed Aziraphale), he is bewitched (Aziraphale kissed him). They close their separate eyes, their separate chests heaving slightly.

_Fuck._

Riverwater eyes find his own shrouded ones. 

"We shouldn't," Aziraphale whispers. 

Crowley can only nod.

"I want to," Aziraphale whispers again. Something fierce in it. That old stubborn-self. That old bullheaded Aziraphale, built from steel bones. _There you are, you old warrior. I don't know what rot they've told you, how they've buried you in second-guessing. Underneath it all, you've always been steel._

So Crowley nods again. (What else is there to do? What else is there to offer?) For once he is at a loss for words. He slowly puts himself back together. Pulls the jacket shut, buttons his shirt to the top. The heaviness of their existence sets in as the silence creeps back and lays steadily. Something is listening. He looks around but sees nothing. 

_Are we safe here? If I wake you up, are we safe?_

"Good night, Anthony Crowley," Aziraphale says. He finds Crowley's hand there in the grass, tearing wretchedly at the green blades. Aziraphale squeezes his ringless hand in his own warm one, the palm damp and sweaty. The pulse long-remembered.

He watches Aziraphale go, sees the white back disappear into the shadow of the abbey. 

Why misery? Why ache? Crowley tries to dig the unpleasantness out from behind his eyes. His back is tense and he can feel the muscles knotting up between his shoulder blades. _Just once, just once, let me have a happy ending. God, are you up there? Are you listening? I asked you once why you tested them. To destruction, to misery. Why, if you haven't given us free will, why you come for us with a knife in the dark too? At least give me somewhere safe to land. Somewhere soft and warm. I swear to the stars, I’ll burn this whole city down just to find you. Just to have you back._

No. No. Crowley knows better. Knows his fanged mouth, his black crow-wings. His serpent-slither body is a monster's body and he is a monstrous thing. He knows better. (It's the oldest story in the world.) He sits there on that gentle hill until the dawn paints the sky, staring off into the distance. Staring at the dark door to the abbey, where a wool habit was last seen. Monsters do not get happy endings. 

He's never been good at listening. So here he is, a demon who has forgotten his place in the old song, interrupted by a kiss. He picks up the leather satchel, pulling it close to his lap. 

Half a pomegranate and riverwater wine. And there, at the bottom, is a lyre too.


	5. The Taste of Salt on His Tongue

_“Then Geryon rested his neck to one side_  
 _As might a poppy when it mars_  
 _The tenderness of its body shedding_  
 _Suddenly all of its petals.”_  
Stesichorus, _Geryoneis_

_Tintern Abbey_ _  
_ _1347_

It is autumn. That terrifies him.

It comes closer. More are sick on the Continent. More are dead. A report comes from Dorset. A sailor from Gascony had come down with the plague. It is their first casualty on English shores. He had thought the tales were exaggerated, that this had been a myth, a ghost story told around fires, sailor to sailor. The seafarers are rife with their superstitions, their phantom ships. Aziraphale had seen the pallor of the visiting Benedictine monk who had come wearing a white face and the clench of dread. He hears the reports from Paris, the names of the dead stretch on for pages.

Aziraphale believes the stories now.

Sicily had fallen (twelve galleys had entered port, bearing the dead like biers). Pisa had fallen shortly after, turning the ships away in panic. They had carried on then to Marseille, had docked like ghost ships piloted by skeleton hands. By the time the Marseillais knew it had landed on their soil, they were already dead.

It waits, it creeps. (It won’t be known for hundreds of years, that tiny bacterium _Yersinia pestis,_ which breaks into cells like a horse into Troy.) It rises from over the Asiatic steppes, the howling and dusty winds, on the backs of marmots fleeing from North India, China, Mongolia. It is lobbed over the walls in Feodosia in 1346 by a Tatar army. It was one of the first cases of biological warfare, using their catapults to load up the corpses of the miserable, diseased dead and throw them over the ramparts into the unfortunate city.

The infected towns run from their sickhouses in terror. Aziraphale knows they bring the foul air with them. Where they go, the pestilence follows. All cities and towns bar their doors, their walls, in the vain hope that it might, like the tenth plague, pass over them. If they could paint their doors with the blood of lambs, they would. The plague bears no kindness, it doesn’t care for rank nor wealth. It comes for all men. He knows this, he waits for it to come to him. He knows it will hurt, that the end is near and black. He had heard the screams the year before, all the way from Constantinople across the Bosphorus.

There is nothing to do but wait.

He watches Crowley from a distance, wondering how long he might keep the sailor here, in service to translation. He does not want Crowley to leave. He frowns, furrows his brow. _Stop this._ He shifts in the familiar uniform. The habit, white as winter, white as a blank sheet. The belt, the long length of the scapular.

He thinks of his mother. He thinks of Mary, Mother of God, named for bitterness. He thinks of Crowley. Beautiful as a mythological prince. Beautiful as Heracles, who was the son of a god, who had powerful shoulders, a strong neck, wide back. Who had fought the monsters and won. 

Aziraphale had kissed Crowley. 

Crowley had kissed _back._

They dance around each other in the abbey. He knows it, he doesn’t know why they both cannot leave it well alone . There are plenty of other monks that Crowley pays no attention to. Plenty of other monks whom Crowley does not look at. Does not catch across the refectory hall, face dark and hooded and a curled sulk in that soft mouth. A glimmer of firelight on the strange sunglasses. There has always been a strange something between them, he does not know what. It doesn’t matter. He is as frustrated as kindling about to catch. He knows something will happen, is bound to happen. His skin is hot and prickled. He thinks of another day on a hillside. Crowley, surprised, sucking at him like a lamprey eel. Their tongues slick and knotted. His hands, pulling at pale skin, as if he could take away pieces, cut them out. Put them in a pocket for later, to keep. _I want you._ It isn't enough. How can he state the size of the want, how it centers in his core, could collapse his very being around it? Perhaps, perhaps later it will pass. Lust is always temporary. He knows it does not matter, that though the infection might be drained, the damaged, abscessed pocket where it once was will remain. He is no longer whole, there are gaps in him that have opened up, waiting for someone to fill them.

It's not just lust. (He knows that. Aziraphale knows that now.)

 _Crowley. You look good in black._ Black is everything and nothing. It is the absorption of all color or the absence of everything. It can represent so much . Evil, perhaps, yes, but also knowledge and sin, severity and nothingness. There is no gentleness to black, it does not come in shades. It was one of the first colors used in cave paintings by ancient Neolithic creatures. They had burnt their sticks and scribbled on stone. Black is the color of most of our words, our knowledge. The Romans created their ink, vine black, from scorched grapevine branches. Ivory black, that other ancient recipe for ink, comes from our very bodies, from charred bones mixed with oil and drawn up into a quill. 

Black, the color of ink. The color of knowledge. Aziraphale has ink-smudged hands, black ink on the sides of his palms. He looks over at Crowley, ever drawn to black. He tries to shake it off, to let it go. Aziraphale gets lost in his work, desperate to put as much of himself down on parchment, aware suddenly of his own mortality. The dying isn’t the worst bit, it is the _forgetting._ The more of himself he can spill out into words, into his work with a brush, the more likely is the remembering. He is terrified of a future, likely not too distant, where his name will mean _nothing_ , his suffering nothing, his bones will be nameless dust. He wants to scream into the sky, _yes, yes, yes I have lived._

* * *

It has been six weeks since the kiss. They have not kissed again.

Aziraphale has not stopped _thinking_ about it.

He cannot get Crowley out of his mind. It is strange, this desire in the face of Hell. To crave touch. He is not a man used to touch, he does not know where this need is born from. When Crowley is close to him, he can smell the ink from his little jar (syrupy, like corked wine, like day-old blood). Can scent the memory of the stables he had tended to in the morning, woven in hay and horsesweat. He can feel the heat from Crowley's body. It slips through the air, through the black wool of his tunic, up and tight against his skin. It feels almost deliberate but Crowley's smile is always relaxed and ever artless. He swallows, it sticks in his throat. This is not a sin he can bring to confession. He will die with it on his tongue, like the Greeks with their coins. He needs to move away (he cannot move away).

 _You took me through the bramble, we walked to the river. You talked to the ivy, told me about the plants. (You know so much of them.) About ivy and its creeping vines, how it reaches out to curl around and touch. How it claims._ He thinks of ivy. It crawls over things with grasping, needy stems and tendrils. It goes anywhere it likes, takes anything it wishes. He _cannot_ have Crowley, cannot touch him, no. Not once, not ever. Consider instead if he were a cut of ivy. He could creep up on Crowley, curl around his ankles, in between his toes. Spread leaves out over his skin, brush him with pale unripe berries. Could stain him with the faint ink of green chlorophyll. Marked, smelling of sunlight and cell division. Yes, perhaps ivy.

Aziraphale prays that he might become a bed of ivy.

Later at night, in his blank cell, he fantasizes about the other man. Of Crowley, the dangerous thing. Crowley is strange and bright and surreal. His dreams are the ideal of sin. Crowley, his dark tunic open, his chest bare to the sky. He is exposed on Aziraphale’s work desk, the parchment shoved to the side, the graphite ink staining the floor. Aziraphale knots his hands in that birdnest of russet hair, that long neck exposed like a feast. Look at me, he begs, craving those unknown eyes. Eyes that in his fantasies are bright and colorless.

He cannot bear to have Crowley look away.

 _I want you to know it is me. I need you to know it is me doing this to you._ His hands reach down, lower, slick with oil (in his greatest blasphemy he knows it is the holy anointing oil of myrrh) and take hold. What would he feel like held within his fist? Aziraphale has never touched another man, all he can do is picture a mirror of his own self. What would it be like to dip his tongue into that hollow of Crowley's narrow throat? Would it taste like dirt? (Like nectar?) _I want to claim you. Mark you. I want you to walk through the world with the impression of our fucking. I would like to tease you, make you whine for me. (I cannot, I am impatient, I cannot wait.) I want to explore you, discover you. I will get my ropes, my lamps, my tools. Hush, I am making a map of you, your body. Where you end and I begin. It is not always so clear. If I get turned around while lost inside you, wait a little while. I might find my way back (I am not sure I want to)._ _You’re something more than human, aren’t you? Take your glasses off, let me see you. Please. There's something about you. About us. I don't know what it is. You came with all the languages of the world on your tongue. I saw you pull light from the sky. You were sent from above, weren't you? (An angel? A blessing from the Lord?)_

He bites back a moan out of habit. The world explodes in white light, white heat. Aziraphale comes while fucking his fist, thinking of holy things.

* * *

When he sleeps after, the world is painted in dreams. The world is different in dreams. Softer and stranger. Time moves in twisting ways, back and forth like a river. The past is now, now is the past. Half-forgotten, half-remembered. 

_Do you remember Rome?_

There are stone streets and there are temples of marble. The crowds chatter and press together. Aziraphale brushes the folds of his long white toga. One moment, here he is in a small and dark tavern. The taste of thick wine still lingering on the back of his tongue. Acidic and tannic, as bitter as radicchio. He can taste laughter too. Aziraphale has never had an oyster but here, in this dream, there is a polished tray and his hands know how to pick them, to squeeze the lemon over, to knock them back without swallowing. 

The red-haired man is there. He’s always there. Always smiling that impish grin, cutting through the memory with his sharp jaw. His long fingers squeeze Aziraphale’s hand under the wooden table. _This is what it is to be safe and loved. To be happy._ _I love you._ (Somehow it is not a surprise. It is the most natural thing in the world, to love the black-wrapped man across from him.) The dream shifts and there is a hillside. Green grass rolling out like a carpet from under cypress trees and juniper. The sun is bright and warm on his back. His hand is still held, safe and warm in the red-haired man’s soft grip. 

_“I loved you from the start, angel. I’ll love you until the end. In every world, every Universe. Come what may. I’m yours. Till the end. Promise.”_

A gold band is placed on his hand and there is a kiss placed on his mouth. There is a bed and Aziraphale knows soft pillows and the push of hands against him, into his wanting hips. He is kissed, yes and he kisses too. It is _everything everything everything_. The tongue in his own. This hand in hand and mouth in mouth. Endlessly repeating, loving endlessly. From the dawn of time until the end of the world. He falls into a spread of white wings and downy feathers. A flash of warm gold. Aziraphale is held tightly against a chest, his ear pressed to the beat of a knocking heart, holding the man he loves. It is the holiest of things, loving like this. Open-hearted loving with ribs cracked wide.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

When Aziraphale wakes, sweat dripping down his back and the memory of feathers under his fingers, he gasps a little into the darkness. 

_It’s you. It’s always been you. Who are you? What are you? What are we? Why do I feel like I’ve known you forever? That I’ve loved you forever? That I belong to you, gold ring to gold ring? When I kissed you, I knew how to touch you without learning. Without thinking. How to bend your neck, where you would turn your head. Tell me the story of these wings. Who are you? (Have you been sent to me?)_

_Anthony Crowley, who are you? (Who are you to me?)_

* * *

Aziraphale sits in the pews of the cathedral after the mid-day prayer of Sext, head bowed. He is not praying. He has tried, he does not know what to say. (He is so tired. He knows he should get up, move on to another task. Care for the ill. Change the buckets, change the straw. Instead he sits there without energy to move. _An object at rest._ ) He thinks instead of the prayer. It is always on the Crucifixion. He studies the man on the cross, nailed like a common piece of wood. The art of the thing is basic and rather ugly. He’s never liked it. _They’ve done you a disservice,_ he thinks.

Sext is the prayer hour of fullness. It is usually a quick office, not as prominent as Lauds or Vespers, and consists of typically three psalms, a hymn, a lesson, the Kyrie Eleison. They are recited when the sun is at its peak, a time to think of divine splendor and divine grace. In this prayer, one asks God for health and peace of mind, reflects upon temptation and turns aside. _I could learn a thing or two._

Earlier that day, Aziraphale had gone into the village. He had looked at the sky, rubbing one pale hand against his tired, deepset eyes. Heavy and grey, the color of unwashed linen. Dirty laundry. Three women surrounded the cistern.

"Brother Aziraphale," one had called, waving from the distance. "Have you heard? It has come." 

There is a cold march of dread. "It?" _Please, no._

"The plague. At the end of the street, the last house on the left."

"Oh," he had said, dread sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"Be careful," one said as he had turned in the direction of the sick house, "don't tempt your fate too soon."

_Don't mind them. Shake it off._

Aziraphale had gone into the house. The sick man had brown hair and brown eyes. For some reason that had seemed important. As soon as he had seen the unlucky man, it was clear that there is not long left. He had picked something to remember him by, something simply more than _plague victim_. No, instead let us remember the brown hair, the brown eyes. Past that, he remembers more. The sick swollen buboes, rising like mushroom caps from his throat, nestled just below the jaw. They streak with purple and yellow, rampant infection. The rattled cough, the groaning. The vomiting, the foul, salty, bitter smells of the dead and the dying. He dies twelve hours later, as a young monk lays wet cloth over his head. One last speckled breath and then nothing. He was the first.

 _He will not be the last._ No, Aziraphale has heard the tales. He knows the plague spreads as rapidly as an inkstain, consuming all men in its wake. Here, sitting in the hard pew, the crucifix watching over him, Aziraphale drops his face into his folded hands.

He sees the tips of the buskin boots appear before the wearer speaks. They are leather and scuffed. Black as spiders, black as pitch. They linger next to him for a long moment, something in the air of searing hot metal and apples too. Vetiver and cedar. Seawater. 

_Crowley._

“Will you come with me?” Crowley asks. It is very quiet. His hand reaches out with those long fingers and that impossibly open palm. Aziraphale holds his breath. The candlelight gleams off of Crowley's lenses, giving the oddest impression of golden eyes. _Will you come with me,_ Crowley has asked. Quietly and never pressing, always offering _come, let me get you out of here. Somewhere safe. Somewhere away._

Aziraphale swallows. How many, many times has he looked to the sky in prayer? Asked for a sign? The clouds have never shifted, the light has never changed. _Put your faith in the Lord,_ everyone says. Doubt bothers men. It is easier to say yes, _this_ , this is true. The world was born on _this_ date, a Tuesday perhaps. It was created in seven days. So-and-so begot so-and-so, and his son and his son’s son and on and on. They can be facts if we wish them to be. Facts put covers over the empty spaces, give us handles to cling to. Take them away and a great nothingness stares back. All we can feed it are our own fears, our own base selves. The worst thing about staring into nothing is that you often find yourself staring right back.

Aziraphale looks up at Crowley, the burnished hair and the parted mouth. The extended hand. 

This has never been _nothing._

"Give me a day," Aziraphale murmurs, blinking a little. _Let me gather myself. Gather my things. I trust you. You've been sent to me, haven't you? I asked for a sign and you came._

Crowley nods. "Sure thing." There's a strange shift to him. An odd balance and tension in his shoulders. "I've got some … wine. Real good one, nicked it off a chap in Rome. Long time ago. You'll like it."

"Nicked it?" Aziraphale says, finally letting himself smile. He lifts a brow. "Do tell me, how much of your wine just _happens_ to fall off the back of a horse, my dear?"

When Crowley laughs, it sounds a little like church bells.

* * *

Later that night, Aziraphale is once more lingering in the scriptorium. He stares at the half-finished sketch on the parchment, graphite staining his hands.

Parchment is not like paper. It is the skin of an animal. Parchment, called _pergamenum_ in Latin, can be made from any animal if you’re dedicated enough. Vellum, similar in creation, is always from a cow’s hide. It is a slow, tedious process to turn a creature into a blank slate. First, select the hide in the abattoir. Then wash it in cool, clean running water for one day and one night until it is clean enough. The skin will, as all natural and dead things tend to do, begin to rot and the hair will release and fall out like dry pine needles. If you need it done faster, you can soak the skins in a mixture of lime and water, stirring regularly with long and splintered wooden poles. Then lay the skins flat. Scrape at them with a knife, removing the bristles. Rinse, repeat. The skin is then stretched tightly on a wooden frame and dried, flat as a board. As the skin dries, it will shrink, so it cannot be nailed to the frame or it will tear. Instead, small pebbles are pushed into the edges and cord is wrapped around, it is tied to the frame and can be adjusted as it dries. Parchment is like leather, it is ever-durable, far more than paper. It will last longer than us all, for thousands of years.

Binding is the final step in the production of a manuscript. Today, Aziraphale has been binding a book of hours, freshly completed and illuminated. The parchment pages must be collected, organized into the final order. Some books are never completed. They sit on the library’s shelves in loose, stitched pages. They are written into the list of books by the librarian as _in quaternis._ Partition the pages into groupings, called gatherings. The gatherings are then each stitched with cords along the spine. The stitching is usually done with the assistance of a sewing frame. Wooden and upright on the desk, sewing is always the most time-consuming part of bookbinding. There are many stitches that can be used, a herring-bone, a kettle stitch. The boards to finish the piece with covers vary from place to place. In Wales, in Tintern, oak is preferred. It is taken from the very clutches of trees that surround the abbey. The library has many books from further afield. In Italy, they prefer beechwood and pine. These woods are lighter than English oak, they feel less heavy to pick up, carry about. Now structurally sound, the cover of the piece can now be decorated. Covered in leather, tanned, and dyed. Perhaps stamped or wrapped in fabric, called a chemise, or perhaps set with precious stones to be later stolen by uneasy hands.

 _Look at you there, in front of the windows, hair the color of witchcraft, like bright flame._ Aziraphale cannot be expected to spend hours of each day in Crowley's presence, he is terrified of betraying himself. He might slip once, in excitement over a beautiful piece, a new acquisition. Crowley would turn in kind, always nearby, always with a kind word and ready to taste Aziraphale's enthusiasm. Consider how it might go. Aziraphale might kiss him. Touch him. Crowd him up against a wall. Knock the ink to the floor, let it spread out like an ocean. The wine-dark damp. He wants someone to beg (he is not sure which). This _cannot_ be allowed.

Tonight it is just them. The scriptorium is quiet. Empty but for them. Crowley stretches and Aziraphale's quill jumps. A spot of ink appears on the page where the nib pauses. (He is cataloging recent library acquisitions from Cluny Abbey, deep in central France. Most were the usual sort of reflections on devotion and interpretations on teachings of the early Church Fathers. There is also, however, a small volume of Plato’s _Republic_ that he is particularly excited about. Most of the Greek and Roman texts do not get lent out. Aziraphale claims not to covet but he collects titles like a magpie. His library a treasure hoard.) 

It is difficult to focus on his task while Crowley is so close, nearby and working through his translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Crowley proves to be skilled with words, gifted with a bit of writing. He shrugs when given a compliment, handed any gift of kindness. _Nah, angel, s'no big deal. Just words, yeah?_

“How’s the translation work coming?” He settles back into the chair. Watches Crowley drape his long body across his own, one booted foot kicked up lazily over the arm. The glasses as ever obscuring his eyes. (Aziraphale wonders over colors. Crowley, from far in the north. From Scottish hills and dales. He imagines blue and green. Brown and hazel. _I want to see you, let me see all of you.)_

Aziraphale watches him curiously. _Are you even human? You’re not, are you? I remember wings. You’ve been sent to me in the face of Hell. The end of the world. Are you an angel? (Are you mine?)_ He can imagine it. The lines of Crowley in the clouds. The shape of him wrapped in white and gold. His long rose-red hair falling in curls around that angular face. A harpist maybe. A lyre player, perhaps. Singing the song of Heaven. The song of the Lord. All the praises of the world. Crowley with spread white wings, wide and open, covering him with love and light. A magic Aziraphale had never known before (not in this lifetime). _You smell like the sky, like the breeze through the trees. Like relief and joy and you feel like home. I haven’t known you long but my heart has known you always, hasn’t it? I knew you at once. Have I known you before? (Have I loved you forever? Have you loved me?)_

_Tell me. Tell me what I don’t know._

“Got more of it. You know, if you wanna see," Crowley says, picking up a sheaf of notes from the work desk and handing them over. "Here.”

Aziraphale leafs through the pages, looks up at Crowley. "Shall I read out loud?"

There's a nervous swallow in the neck of the sailor. Crowley shrugs.

"If you like, angel. Anything you want."

* * *

_Orpheus was a lyre player. So he followed the rivers into the underworld, snaking along the water, to and fro, always with the flow. Unseen and invisible, he came there into the darkness and before Hades and his half-stolen wife._

_“Why are you here?”_

_“For Eurydice. To bring her back.”_

_“That’s cute.”_

_“Hades,” Persephone said, placing his hand on his arm. “Let him talk.”_

_“Why should I listen to you?”_

_Orpheus pauses, looks up at him. “Because I’m in love. Isn’t that the only thing that matters?”_

_Hades shifts (not looking at Persephone). “Tell me, I hear you’re a player.”_

_“Yes, I play the lyre.”_

_“Then play for me, Orpheus,” Hades drawled. “Sing me a love song. Convince me. Make it good and save the world with a song, if that’s what you're on about.”_

_So Orpheus sang of strings and stars, winding rivers and well-traveled roads. Of above-ground lovers and their below-ground hearts. Persephone tightened her hand on Hades' arm._ _“Orpheus, stop,” Hades said. “You’ve made your point.”_

_“You’ll let her go?”_

_“Something like that,” Hades dragged his fingers over his beard. “I’ll make you a deal.”_

_“What kind of deal?”_

_“I’ll let her go. Lead her back out the way you came in. Take the rivers and the back alleys. She’ll follow behind you by ten paces. You cannot reach out. Cannot talk. Cannot make sure she’s there, got that? Not until you’re above ground. Not until you’re out of the dark.”_

_“Don’t look back?”_

_“Don’t look back, Orpheus. Don't you dare ever look back. Not before you’re free.”_

_“Or what?”_

_Hades smiled. “Or the deal’s off. You’re a smart lad. Go on then, be careful.”_

* * *

“Well, angel? How'd I do?” Crowley asks, brow and cupid-bow mouth quirked in the manner of one who already knows. Aziraphale says nothing. He looks at the other man, sharp-cut and wire-framed. He looks at his own wide hands, grey hair dotting the knuckles. 

_This cannot be borne. (I have to touch you.)_ Aziraphale hesitates, his mouth pressed into a worried wobble. He straightens his back, his steady spine. 

It's time to jump in. To let go. It's time to take the first bite of that apple there, stretched out to him by a scaled hand. _I've always lived my life in fear. In trying to be something that I'm not. I've always gone where I should and done as I've been told. And you don't ever tell me. You just ask, you wait. No one has ever listened. No one has ever been patient. It's time for me to meet you halfway._

_I'll go with you. Anywhere in the world, Anthony._

“May I see them?” Aziraphale traces the topography of veins on the back of Crowley's hand. His hands, like the rest of his body, show his age. His skin is less taut than Aziraphale’s and paler still, sinking into the valleys between bone and sinew. _I will show the sun to your dark places_. 

“Huh?” Crowley frowns. Uncertainty and hesitation in the tension of his hand, his skin already clammy and damp with Aziraphale's ghost touch. Aziraphale looks up. Catches the direct line of the sunglasses, the insouciant lean of Crowley into the desk chair.

“Your wings." It is the question that has sat on his tongue for days. Aziraphale wets his bottom lip. "May I see them?"

Crowley goes perfectly still. Ice-dipped and rigid. To sound against him would shatter his glass bones, shatter the dangerously calm creature. Aziraphale watches his nose, his mouth, his chest. He is not breathing. Long minutes pass. (Longer than any human might survive without air.) “What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” Crowley hisses.

Aziraphale tightens his grip on Crowley's hand. “Do you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

"Anthony," Aziraphale says. He closes his eyes, inhales his own strength, his stubborn soul. _How things are better around you. Brighter. How I heal faster, the world gets lighter. You carry more in your bag than Euclid would ever make space for. You forget to breathe sometimes. (Like now, my dear. No mortal man can hold his breath that long.) You know every human language. You were there when they were made, weren’t you? I know you. I can name you._ Aziraphale licks his lips. Draws on his steelspine. Squares his shoulders and buys a moment by fastidiously righting his sleeves, adjusting his habit. Some dreams are made to be trusted, so he pushes forth and looks back up. 

“I know what you are.”

Crowley is dangerously pale. His brows spike high above his lenses. “You _don’t._ M'not - Not anything - _”_ Crowley says, his words spilling faster than the knocked-over bottle. (He had jumped up, hips checking the table, scattering the papers and wine.) “ _Look,_ I can explain. Whatever damn thing it is you think you saw -“

“You’re an angel," Aziraphale says quietly. He folds his hands in his lap and tilts his head.

Crowley has ricocheted like a pinball across the room, loping and bouncing from desk to desk, his boots a measure across the stone floor and hands buried in his own hair. At the word _angel,_ Crowley stops. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t bother to breathe. He spins slowly around, coming to face Aziraphale.

“An angel,” he says flatly.

“Yes.”

“Not a monster? A … a demon? You know, here to tempt you and corrupt you? You think I, me, am a bloody _angel_?" There’s something hollow in his voice, as if Aziraphale could knock on it and hear himself knocking back. Something strange and clawing. Half of his words don't quite make sense. Crowley gives a short half-laugh and collapses in the nearest chair. "Pass the wine, yeah? I need a drink. Everyone's always on about angels these days. God, I hate this century."

“You haven’t tempted me,,” Aziraphale says, passing him the wine and ignoring half of his mad words. “ _You_ even pushed me away. That night when I kissed you, you pulled back. I feel - the way I feel isn’t evil, Crowley. Rather, well," he pauses and looks away, color in his skin. In his cheeks, his ears. Up and down his throat. "Well, it's as if the very sun has risen in my chest.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispers, his brows very high. " _Please_." 

( _Your eyes must be so wide right now, I can tell by the stretch of your skin, the wrinkles in your forehead. Take those off, it's only us.)_ “I love you.”

Crowley drops his head into his hand, one . “I can’t. Not like - Not like this.”

“Darling, let me see you. Please." Aziraphale shifts in his chair, twisting the gold pinky ring nervously around his small finger. Crowley follows his hands, his every movement. "I dreamt of you last night. We were - we were in Rome?"

"Rome."

"On a hillside."

"Oh."

"You loved me then."

“Yeah," Crowley whispers, sunk and miserable. "Still do." Why would a man be miserable? In love? Here in his bright heart, full of love, where all the darkness fades away, Aziraphale thinks of the stones and the bones of the church and the pestilence, knows he could climb them all to get closer to the sun. Closer to the sky, where the angels are found. Crowley hasn't pulled his face from where it's buried in his hands. There is a long pause. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. "What else do you remember?"

"It _is_ a memory then?"

"Yes." 

A rush fills Aziraphale's heart. A twist of joy and ache and _yes yes yes_. Hearts always know when they love and are loved in turn. "Will I remember? All of it? Do you think?" 

"If I _damn_ well have any say in it, yeah." Crowley's hands are fisted on the table, his breathing returned now in harsh winds. "You will."

"How?" Then Aziraphale pauses, blinking. His mouth drops open. "Oh! The river. That's why - You weren't just being poetic."

Crowley laughs, dry and empty. "Stretched the truth kinda. Just a bit. I found the river. Nah, I was - shit, angel, I was just lookin' for you." 

Aziraphale reaches out, hand covering Crowley's tight fist. "My love, why are you waiting then?"

"Can I kiss you first?"

"My dear?"

"Please, just - before this - just before I -" Crowley's shoulders heave. Up and down, in and out. "Just let me kiss you. Please." 

" _Yes_ ," he whispers. "I need - "

Crowley surges forward, dropping his arm hard on the wood desk. Not giving a damn for his own bones and pulling at Aziraphale's shoulders, his arms, his hands coming up to cup around Aziraphale's jaw. His mouth there, pressed hard and desperate against Aziraphale's own. Someone keens into the air, lost to the world. _You taste like benediction._ His head is pushed back by Crowley's enthusiasm. He wants to watch, he never wants to look away but Crowley is too blinding in his radiance. Too much. Too much gold in him, in his mouth. Too much red in his lips, his tongue, his burning cheeks. Crowley moans as Aziraphale’s tongue lashes at his own. He can feel the tastebuds like goosebumps in the wet, hot mouth, he can feel the smoothness of pale skin under his own touch. Crowley tastes salty, like earth, the sea, the body of Christ. Crowley is _pulling_ at him, desperate to wrench Aziraphale closer, to pull him into himself. Aziraphale pulls back in turn, aching and needy. _I need you. God, I need you._ Bombs detonate behind his eyelids, sparking from the crown of his head, racing along the vagus nerve down his spine. He is sweating. He is hot, he is cold. He is delirious (he is terrified). _I need you. I love you. Oh fuck, I love you._

Centuries pass. Perhaps millennia. Stars are born and die and they are still here, finally parting gently. Crowley rests his forehead against Aziraphale's own, both catching their breath. He eases back gently from Aziraphale, chest heaving. They suck at the oxygen in the air like greedy misers. Aziraphale shuts his eyes. _Please, please, I need a moment. Let me float here bonelessly until the end of time._

_(Let me touch you. I want to know you without needing to see you. Humans do not have a wide hearing range, not compared to most other creatures. The human ear is sensitive from zero to eighty-five decibels, beyond that can shake the fluid of the inner ear, blow out the drum. I don’t need to hear you to know that you are speaking, calling out. I can feel that in the tension of your muscles. I can know you calling my name with my hands. I need sound instead for discerning the quiet. The moments here against me when you do not move, when the only things are the soft passing of your breath, the low-pitched whisper of holy holy holy.)_

“You know, I quite like your nose,” Aziraphale says, touching his finger to the bump on the bridge. Crowley stares, disbelief in his slack mouth.

“You're somethin' else, angel," Crowley laughs, gasping still, rattling apart in Aziraphale's hands.

"Please," Aziraphale says, eyes wide and open, taking in all of Crowley that he's allowed. "I want to remember."

Crowley shudders. "Look, you might not be into _this_. 'Cause, the thing is, you're half-right. Bit off the mark on the timeline though. Just - you have to trust me. What you see, well, you won't like it."

 _How could I ever not like a part of you?_ (Aziraphale doesn't understand.)

Crowley moves backward, there into the center of the room. Aziraphale's breath catches. The light glints off Crowley's skin, the chain at his neck. He reaches up and pulls the sunglasses off, his eyes tightly shut and folding the arms in, tucking them into a pocket. 

It starts with a rush of air, the outstretch of raven-dark wings. They are wide and beautiful, the color of the darkest night. Oil-black and soft-looking. Strange and surreal. The candlelight glimmers on the sheen of the feathers. _Oh, I want to touch you. You're so impossibly beautiful._ Crowley stands unmoving, his head bent and eyes still closed. Wear and exhaustion in the lines of that sharp face yet as beautiful as thunder, as beautiful as lightning. Aziraphale doesn’t want to stare, yet cannot look away. No, who could look away from this, the blazing and incandescent being that is Crowley, splendid and ethereal?

Crowley looks up and opens his eyes and Aziraphale falls into molten gold. Eyes like burning pitch. Golden as the births of stars. Eyes of nothing of an angel, of nothing from above. Snake-slitted and golden as fire. 

"Not an angel," Crowley mutters, looking away. (Desperately pale, his shoulders shaking.) "Just, you know, the monster from the black lagoon." 

“You don't look like a monster to me,” Aziraphale says, putting his hand on Crowley’s arm. His eyes sharp and intent, brow furrowed. Crowley looks up, wide-eyed and blinking. "My love, you look _beautiful_."


	6. Follow Me Into Exodus

_"You're a ghost la la la_  
 _You're a ghost_  
 _I'm in the church and I've come_  
 _To claim you with my iron drum"_  
John Cale, Paris 1919

Something is coming.

How is the hair on the back of your neck? How is the creep of your skin, the crawl of it? Tell me, do you know what's out there? We shut the door, lock the monsters out. _Don't you dare knock, don't you dare come in._

Something is coming. It is nearly here.

Crowley remembers the plague. How it came. He had squeezed his bruise-yellow eyes shut, breathing in deeply. The air in the plague-infested towns had been stifling with sick and stillness. Outside, someone reaches for a loose wrist. Their fingers curl around a pale hand, resting a wretched forehead against the slack knuckles. The sick are weak and delirious, moaning at ghosts in the walls. You might wonder how it feels to touch the swelling, to feel the bubo pulsating there under the skin. What it is to carry death within the body, palpable and obvious. The uninfected can only watch and bring damp cloths. They pull their wool shawls tighter around them although they are not cold. His long, black-haired fingers clench at the fabric, whiteknuckled. Watch the buboes spread over the skin, malicious in their subcutaneous hemorrhaging, the dusky bruises settling like shadows across the flesh. 

Yes, it is nearly come.

The dead pile up, in the abbey and the nearby village. They, the living, can hardly keep up with burying them. Sometimes they lay in piles, stacked like cut wood. The bodies, already horrifying, break down in stages. They start with autolysis and putrefaction, the body’s own chemicals and enzymes gnawing away at tissues. Bacteria get in on the feast, letting out the malodors of cadaverine and putrescine, the unmistakable scent of death and decay. The corpses bloat with death gas, scavengers nudge at the bones and the wretched cornucopia of rotten intestines. Carrion beetles and mites settle, blowflies, bottle flies (green as the flecks in an angel's eyes). The rats never leave, they are everywhere. It is not a shock to see a corpse in a street, a dismembered arm in some lazy alleyway, carried and dropped by some unlucky animal. A dog perhaps, a fox.

Crowley is exhausted, his skin aches. What sort of leverage does he have with God? Not much. He looks elsewhere but everything is a bleak nothingness. He grits his teeth. The molars might crack. He borrows words from other mouths (he cannot bear his own). “Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit,” murmured softly into the quiet between dust and shadow. _True love will hold on to whom it has held._ Seneca, that old orator, had known a thing or two. _I love you, I love you, I love you. (I will find you, I swear.)_

Something is coming. 

Must we look? The shadow of the sick, the long fingers of pestilence. Their white reach and their pale horse. Where the horsemen wander, Death follows closely after, never raising his voice. Always patient. No one avoids a shadow, no breath lasts forever. (We must stop, breathe out. There must be pauses in our light.) 

“Why?”

“IT ISN'T A PUNISHMENT.”

“Yeah, sure, that's just obvious, isn’t it? What do we get after this? Already got rainbows.”

“SOMEDAY YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.”

Crowley doubts that. (Crowley is a monster, everything about him is red.)

* * *

The plague is in the village houses now. But this time, at this moment, Crowley is not out there, he is not in the village. He does not know that the houses are falling like dominoes. Does not know that the pale shadow grows in the long dark. 

Where the sun sets on the earth, somewhere else it must always rise. 

Aziraphale had called him beautiful. His fingers are outstretched and hesitant, asking to stroke the dark feathers. To look in the bad-luck-snake's eyes.

Crowley holds the neck of the wine bottle by white-knuckled fingers. He doesn’t speak. Instead, he nods and gathers up his shoulders, his jangle-bone self. _Breathe. Relax._ He looks down the long room, stone-walled and stone-floored too. The tapestry opposite him, done in blues and silvers, of a long-dead beast with a mane-rimmed neck and a scaly backside, pointed dexter. Similar creatures have been seen in bestiaries, he has painted them, edged them in gold leaf. The tapestry is old, at least a hundred years or so, and the dyed wool and linen are faded. Where it is shot through with silver thread, it gleams in the candlelight.

The unicorn. Left on earth alone. ( _It's too late,_ he had yelled, his confession-red hair whipping around his head as the storm had started to lick in. _Well, you've still got one of them._ Crowley grimaces now, looking up at the last unicorn, knowing how it feels.) 

"Can I?" Aziraphale whispers. Crowley nods and those beloved hands are there now, a breath over his wingspan, petting the night-black parts of himself, righting the wrongs of him too. 

He might cry out. Shatter. Swell. Break apart. (Worse, he might be put back together.)

"This isn't the first time I've seen these, is it?"

"No."

"I want to remember," Aziraphale licks his lower lip. "Please, Crowley. You must - Is there a way?"

 _I think so._ “Maybe,” he says, his damned voice low. He is ever drowning in doubt. Crowley the Damned, Crowley the Doubtful. He keeps his doubt to himself, neatly wrapped up and secreted away. This bottle of wine. He opens the bottle with the little bit of hope left in his Pandora's box of a heart, pours out a glass. He holds it out to Aziraphale, digging his sharp teeth into the meat of his lower lip. "Drink this."

"That's all?"

"If we're lucky," Crowley mutters. "It's up to you,” he says. “You don’t have to.”

Aziraphale looks up. “What about you? If I don't drink this, what would - ”

“Look, angel, you’ve got me either way, alright?” Crowley says. _(I don’t know how long for. If you stay this way. I don’t know what they’ve done to you, how human they’ve made you. Something is coming. I can smell it in the air. What would it do to you?)_ "I'm glued onto you either way, whether you've got the whole story or the abridged version."

Aziraphale blinks, looking down at the cup. He looks up again. “Will it be okay?”

“I don’t know, angel,” he whispers. “Just work with me, I’m hoping here.” _If,_ (he clings to _if_ ), _if you come back to me I will do anything._

“But you think it will.”

“Yeah.”

"Why did you wait then?" (There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.)

Crowley shifts. _Because I don't know exactly what will happen. I'm hazarding a guess. Consider it a shot in the dark. They might have lied to me, this might make it worse. (What if I lose you completely?)_ He does not know if there are eyes set in the walls. He should not. (It is nearly over now, he is not sure it matters anymore.) _Goddammit._ Crowley bows his head. The statue of Christ on the crucifix looks on, over the pews of the faithful and doubtful. _I don’t know. I don’t know if you are there. I don’t know if this was your kindness or your madness. If you took him from me or if you gave him back to me. If you're nothing at all. We made a deal. (I'll do anything.)_

"Just - _look_ , if you drink, I'm pretty sure you're gonna understand." He crosses his arms tight against his chest. There are approximately eight feet between them, chest to chest. It might as well be all of England. He is terrified. He wants to keep, to push away. _Stay,_ he thinks. _Get the hell out of here,_ he thinks. He wants to pick Aziraphale up like a stone, carry him like a talisman in a pocket. He wants to leave, shut the door, never to return. (Never to mess it up.) He wonders briefly of what the angel would do, what he might think if Crowley left. What _if_ he left? (It might be better if he does, worse if he doesn't.) If he were gone, never to return. A daydream of the weight of his own spaces. _I love you._ It weighs so much, like he’s swallowed too much. Taken a bite of something far too hot. He is aching, burning. Spit it out. Swallow it down. Love leaves traces and scars. He knows he will not come away from this unscathed. He is petrified. _What will happen to us? What about - after?_ (He is not allowed to ask. He will take what he is given.) “Aziraphale,” he had not meant to sound pleading (he does, god, he fucking _is_ ), “you gotta tell me you're sure.”

Aziraphale with resolute eyes. "I am. I _want_ this." 

When Isolde drank, it wasn't an accident. We knew what we were getting into. She knew the weight of Tristan's stare, the exact distance from eye to ear. _Drink,_ the wine said, asking as the apple had. _Drink me up._ (God, she had been thirsty.)

Aziraphale drinks. Drinks and drinks and drains the damn cup. Drops the cup, drops to his knees. Aziraphale's hands fly to his head, his eyes shut. His breathing stuttered and impatient. Crowley’s legs go weak. He does not know where the desire to crush Aziraphale comes from, his hands betray him, twitching slightly at his sides. His distrustful hands wanting to reach out, to brush against, to make sure everything will be alright.

Aziraphale is on his hands and knees on the floor, wincing and shuddering. Keening out, rough breathed. Crowley drops against him, pulling him tight, trying to give some comfort. _What - tell me, what is this, are you, please, fuck, don't leave, please be okay, please -_

Aziraphale looks up, shuddering for a final time and going still. Pale blue eyes set in a long-familiar way. (When you see a favorite book, hear a familiar song, love is always found there.) 

His throat is very tight. “Do you -“

“You were with me in the garden," Aziraphale says quietly. "You were there in the ark. I invited you to Petronius’ place.”

Crowley can’t speak. His eyes are hot. (He closes them, keeps them fucking shut. Sealed up. Demons don’t cry. Crowley hasn’t cried in centuries.) _Get it together._

"My dear love," Aziraphale whispers, reaching over and pulling at the wool of Crowley's shirt, pulling him in by black thread. _Miraculous._ How did he give in so quickly? The problem is that we are all two of us, the brain and the body. Sometimes it is the body that wins. His skin calls out, his hair calls out, his teeth call out. Aziraphale's mouth seals on his own, sucking at him, cracking against his skin like a bonfire. His eyes close and roll back. There are stars there, entire universes. Bite there, at the lower lip, like it is a ripe plum. Ready to split, to be eaten and consumed. Lick the rich sweet juices up that fall down the throat. He attacks the white stubble on Aziraphale's soft jaw, his lips burning in friction. He licks at the soft skin of the eyelids, feels the moth-soft eyelashes against his hypersensitive lips, touches the end of the straight nose with his tongue. Somehow they have stood up, wound around each other. They back against the heavy desk, Crowley grabs Aziraphale under his thighs, pulls him up to sit on the work surface. He nudges in, steady as a turret between Aziraphale's legs.

_I have wanted to lay you out for so long._

"Angel -" He pulls Aziraphale tighter. He doesn't have to ask the details. What he remembers, how he remembers. The way Aziraphale sinks against him has no tautness of unfamiliarity. The way his hands tremble and reach for Crowley's face is the same way they had the first time, on a night in a room near the Tiber. The way he pulls Crowley in for a kiss is nothing of timidity and question, nothing of learning something new. Aziraphale kisses Crowley with an open mouth, like coming home from a long trip and setting his tongue down like heavy bags. 

_I missed you. (Don't you dare ever leave me again.)_ He feels so tight, so claustrophobic. He cannot breathe, his breath comes quickly and harshly, desperate for oxygen. He thinks of Heracles who came to kill Geryon. Geryon, who had done nothing wrong save but dare to be ugly as sin in a world where men like Heracles walk. He’d done nothing but dare to keep his beautiful cattle, to stake out his little spot in Erytheia. Keep a dog maybe. After the slaughter, the beautiful are always heroes, the ugly always monsters. The cast out beg _I haven’t done anything wrong, why are you here?_

“Can I?” he whispers, his fingers shaking. Rattling like a screen door with nothing of grace. (He is not sure, he is afraid). _You will destroy me._

“Please,” Aziraphale whispers, taking his hand and bringing it down between his legs. _Please never stop. I will never stop. I will love you forever. Shepherd you forever. If we were human and Death came for us, I would take your bones with me, tucked into a reliquary like a saint. I would watch your body for miracles, for you are made in God’s image. I am low, a sinner, you are made of ambrosia and nectar. You are Apollo. Ganymede. I need you._ His hands are gentle, one runs over Aziraphale's sloped shoulders like old parchment, over the curve of his stomach _(the sun is curved as you are curved, how could you ever not be beautiful?)_. His fingertips graze the gooseflesh skin, dimpled like a mountain range. How much can he take? He doesn’t want to hurt Aziraphale, freshly recovered. Crowley hesitates like a man might be careful with a recovering lover, afraid of hurting, afraid of being too much.

His other hand presses the palm against the hard ache he finds there, pushing long-loved buttons and pulling a moan from Aziraphale too.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale breathes. (His name in that mouth, known and familiar. The way it should be. The way it should always be. Love is familiar. Love is knowledge. Memory too. _Don’t you forget me. Don’t you dare leave me here alone._ )

“Tell me,” Crowley begs (like a fucking dog). “Please.” _It’s been so long. I need you._

Aziraphale smiles. It is brightness like a sudden candle lit against the dark. His habit is plain, open at the neck. Crowley can see no mocking in the seaglass eyes, wide and open, ringed with insect leg eyelashes. Aziraphale spreads his hands wide, rubbing them across Crowley's chest, his narrow shoulders. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale says. (It is so simple after all. We tell all these stories, stumbling over the same step, marveling at the simple beauty of the stars and the sun. A blade of grass, the stretch of your neck. The fall of your hair. All this and in the end, it’s just this. Only this. You and me. Me and you. It’s never been complicated. Not here.)

This isn’t falling. Crowley knows what it feels like to fall.

“ _Aziraphale_ ,” he is lost and running his tongue over the rough skin from where he has torn his bottom lip to shreds. It is probably bleeding. (He aches and wants so much for things he cannot have.) Crowley pushes further into this cave of an angel's thighs. Aziraphale fumbling now at his tunic, dark wool dropping to the stone floor. Strong hands with blunt, square fingers wrap over his arm. This angel, this Principality, with hair the color of untouched vellum, the color of the spaces between letters, of bleached linen and forgiven sins. Aziraphale presses his mouth in the soft spot behind Crowley’s ear. The hot, wet air flicks at his skin, electricity races from the crown of his skull down, deep below his waist.

“What do you want?” Aziraphale pauses, his hands gripping Crowley’s shoulders, “I want to know what you want.” His pale hair in his eyes, brushing Crowley’s own sweat-dipped locks away, “I want that.”

How - How does a man expect that? Crowley always wants so much, so he always takes what he is given, has learned to ignore his own wants, to give over to others (no one has ever asked what Crowley wanted). What does he want? He does not know where to start. He runs his hands, his eyes, over Aziraphale with reverence. There are many things Crowley hates. He is quick to temper, quick to self-loathing, yet nothing, nothing will ever make him believe that touching Aziraphale, making love to him, is _anything_ other than an act of worship.

_What do I want? I do not know where to stop. Once it gets going, the want never ceases. Where would you like to start? On your knees (on mine)? On your back, your stomach? Over me? Under? Within and without? I have almost forgotten what it is like to be touched in love. To be spoken to in the act of love. I want you to get my ink set, go fetch it now from the other side of the scriptorium. Dip the quill into the eel-dark ink. I want you to write your name on my back. Tell me things in my skin, between my ribs. Tell me you love me. I want you to ruin me (you already have)._

_Wait, go further. Get a knife. Can you peel away my skin, just there? I want you to see my bones, my ribs, the only thing that will last after me. Carve your name into my skeleton, right here, the fourth true rib. Costae verae. When the archaeologists come thousands of years later, I want them to crack open my thoracic cage, read the words. “Here lies Anthony J. Crowley. Aziraphale loved him once.”_

_I want you to etch a mark into my skin each time we make love. I do not want to be able to look at myself and forget a single moment when you touched me._

_(Are these wrong? Should I stop?)_

“You’re thinking too much,” Aziraphale breathes. Called out, once again. When had those eyes (blue as swallowtails) gotten so close to his own? They are scarce centimeters apart. Aziraphale licks his lips (bitten, chapped, split) and Crowley repeats the motion as if under witchcraft. (Geryon watches Heracles, who has come late in the night. He is confused when Heracles drops the sword, surges forward, pressing his lips to Geryon’s. _I want you,_ Heracles breathes. _But I’m a monster,_ Geryon says, his fingers in the flesh, gripping. Heracles frowns, reaching out with strangely soft hands. _Everyone’s a monster._ )

"I, er, - it's all fine, angel, whatever you -"

"I want to make love."

Crowley shatters. Through the shards, he sucks in a breath. “Here?” He asks, looking around at the desks, the pots of ink. The parchment spread out like he wants to lay an angel down across the heavy oak. Unrolled and spread widely, open to the touch of gentle hands. Prayer-bent hands. (Crowley hasn’t prayed in millennia, he knows there’s worship in him. It’s pressurized, weaponized and dangerous. He has to be careful unscrewing the cap. Don’t be too much, don’t push too much. Don’t fuck this up. _Don’t be yourself._ Even champagne corks can be deadly.)

"It would certainly take a _miracle_ to keep anyone out, wouldn't it?" Aziraphale's eyes glimmer with mirth. His hand raised, that snap of his fingers. The world shifts and rearranges itself in ways it hasn't in three-hundred-and-seven years. It snaps to the beat of Aziraphale's drum, to his preference. The door is miracle-managed and barred by Aziraphale's power.

 _You're back._ Crowley pulls back and drinks in his fill of Aziraphale. Those eyes. Eyes like supernovas, the birth and death of stars.

His head is pushed back by Aziraphale’s enthusiasm. He wants to watch, he never wants to look away but the angel is too blinding in his filthy radiance. Too much. Too much gold in him, in his mouth. Too much red in his lips, his cheeks. Crowley keens as Aziraphale’s tongue lashes at his own. He can feel the tastebuds like goosebumps in that wet, hot mouth, the smoothness of his skin. Aziraphale tastes salty, like earth, the sea, the body of Christ. Crowley is pulling at him, desperate to wrench the angel closer, to pull him into himself. _I need you. God, I need you_. Bombs detonate behind his eyelids, sparking from the crown of his head, racing along the vagus nerve down his spine. He is sweating. He is hot, he is cold. He is delirious (he is terrified). _I need you. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._ _You taste like benediction._

(He thinks then that not all monsters are bad. Plato had talked of the children of the sun, who wore two faces and walked on four legs. Who had been whole, who had been perfection, who had been split down the middle into two men by jealous lightning. Man is the twisted wreckage, the monster. Not the four-armed. No, those creatures had never known love. They had never needed to; they had had no missing parts.)

His hand works, parting Aziraphale's clothing like the sea. _I need to fuck you. I need you. I need to feel you around me, your body around me like shelter, keeping me safe._ Take the angel, peel away his white robes. He spits in his palm, wraps it around the cock pushing into his thigh. Hard as granite, ice, obsidian, hard as cherry wood. Hot as stars. Hot as an open flame. The skin shifts under his grip, the bitter and violent smell of salt washes over him. Salt and sweat and bitter, heavy pre-come. Transparent slick pours from the tip, his rough thumb rubs it around. Aziraphale moans. (Maybe he does too, he isn’t sure of what sounds are his and which are Aziraphale’s.) _I need you, oh fuck, I need you._ Aziraphale’s hands claw at him, unsure of where to settle. They clutch at his tunic, burrow in the dark wool. They wrench at his neck, his face, his hair. Pull at him, enough to hurt, just like that. Aziraphale sucks a hot supplication into Crowley’s neck, at the join of throat and trapezius. _Oh._

_It has been over three hundred years since I lost you. In that time, England fell under a Norman boot. There have been sixteen kings on that throne. I spent part of it in Eleanor's court. (She promised I'd find you. I never believed her. I wanted to.) Crusades were fought. Ghenghis Khan came and saw and conquered too. Abelard and Heloise fell in love. The Templars rose and fell and through it all, I have loved you without knowing if you still existed._

_Breathe in, breathe out. One, two. One, two._

“You won’t hurt me,” Aziraphale gasps, “you can be harder. _Please._ ”

Harder then. Faster too. His hand tightens to a beloved punishment. Aziraphale's hips jump from the desk, trying to fuck Crowley's fist.

He _wants._ (How can we communicate the measure of our want? How do you measure the unknown? Consider then the case of the black hole. We cannot see it, cannot comprehend it. It is the confusion at the center of galaxies where all matter is called home to roost. Perhaps he can measure the speed of the things that orbit him, the things he aches for. Once he knows the speed, he can apply the universal law of gravity to it, compute the difference. Numbers are elegant, they can measure the unknown.) He needs. He will perish with the misery of it. He would prefer to have nothing, so nothing can be taken from him.

“You will have to tell me,” he grits his teeth, he needs to know the measure of the thing. How hard is _too hard_? He knows he could consume the angel, grind up his flesh with his molars like Grendel to Heorot, spit out the bones. 

“I want you,” Aziraphale breathes, his skin flushed. “I want you inside me. Now.” _Fuck, fuck. Oh god_. _Yes, that._ He needs that, to be safe within the space of the man, to feel health surround him, life to hold him within its arms.

The candles have faded. The scriptorium is lit only by starlight through the windows, by Aziraphale’s wilderness of milky skin. Crowley falls between the spread open thighs. Aziraphale leans back on the desk, receiving him joyfully, in desperate delight. The legs part for him, Aziraphale's cock rising up hard and red and wet. It presses into his taut stomach. Crowley bites down on his cheek to keep from crying out. He reaches for Aziraphale’s cock, feeling it jump in his hand. Aziraphale, thickveined and angry-red, wanting. Aziraphale pants, his eyes closed. “Crowley, _please_ ,” he pleads. It’s a familiar and unfamiliar thing, pumping another man’s cock. He is reminded of his own self, the simple differences, the similarities. He knows what he likes so he focuses on dragging the clear precome around the head, flicking up and under, tracing down the long vein of the undershaft. Aziraphale is ragged and harsh, gripping at his shoulders, his throat. He feels absentminded nails dig into his skin and shudders under the drag of it.

_Mark me._

“You feel _perfect,_ I need you - oh _fuck,_ ” Aziraphale whispers. ( _Good God, fuck, you cannot say these things to me and expect me to live through them.)_

Sunk to the hilt, they are _straining_. Push against, push back. They are nothing, _nothing_ but glorious and dirty, with dust and soil in their hair, knocking cobwebs from the corners of the desk. Crowley grunts, he is always in his mind but now, here, here in this instant he is reduced to only feeling. Just his very common body, skinny and pale, a grab-bag of right angles and hypotenuses, wrapped now in Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s health and life curling up around him, tight and hot. These past three centuries, his own fist has always been a poor imitation. Here, here he is a hellbent damned thing, jumping the bones of an angel as beautiful as a forest fire. He fucks with fervor, with ache, and need and all that wrapped into one madcap point of light of claim and possession. _Mine mine mine_ ground out to every snap of his hips. Aziraphale moans, his voice echoing off the walls and the books. Off the codices, the inkwells. The muscles in his neck strain, shear off like cliffs. Levator scapulae. “Fuck me, I _love_ you, I love you so -” Aziraphale whispers, his hips knocking back to Crowley’s own. Aziraphale’s hands come up and pull at Crowley, at his shoulders, his hips, burying him further, taking him in as deep as he can, never to be found again. 

Rutting, rutting like wild animals under a starry sky. _Fuck._ Aziraphale bites and squeezes, his eyes shut so tightly, as he paints Crowley’ tunic with white, gasping, gasping. Oh my god. He wants to pray. He gives over to the ache, to the want of Aziraphale beneath him who is sucking prayers into hidden places on his collar bones. It is like lightning on dry wood, an explosion in fire and a burst of light. He makes a quiet sound, stuttering. He wears the skin of a god for a moment, radiant and bright. Aziraphale borrows it after. (He is even more aware of his own body after, back in the clay of the flesh, sticky and cold as the sweat dries to his skin.) He stutters and comes, swelling with whiteness and music and stars. His fingers twitching on Aziraphale's shoulders. His hand pulling at Aziraphale's tense red dick, pulling him in after himself.

They collapse on the desk. Breathing. Papers scattered over the floor. 

There is time enough to catch their breath. He eases back from Aziraphale, chest heaving. They suck at the oxygen in the air like greedy misers. Crowley shuts his eyes. _Please, please, I need a moment. Let me float here bonelessly until the end of time. I need you. I need you to lie still. I am going to count you. There are two-hundred and six bones in your body, I want to make sure they are all accounted for. Your skull, your coccyx, your metatarsals. Do you have any idea how I love you? Like a fish loves the sea, that deep and unknowable nothingness. We have never seen the ocean floor, I do not know the depths of you. Mesmerizing, incomprehensible, deep. I thought you were dead, you are not. My heart is still working, so you must be alive. I will keep you safe, your bones safe. Gather up your ribs like a bouquet, scatter them to the wind._

"Stay," Aziraphale whispers. Out beyond them, deep in the abbey, the bells call for Compline.

Compline is the last prayer, the quietest of them all. After compline is silence until Vigils, until the cycle is renewed. Compline is his favorite prayer. It reminds him of winter. Of the quiet of snow, blanketing the earth. The quiet of emptiness, spaciousness, the in-betweenness of things. He thinks of a heartbeat, he knows that Compline is the moment in-between beats, that unsure quiet thing which might be death but also, maybe, might be renewal.

"Here?" Crowley asks, "We could go anywhere."

"Then where?"

"Always wanted to spend a night in Eden with you," Crowley smirks. He snaps his fingers, pulling the world out from under them. When it smooths out, they are in his bed aboard the _Eden_ , the gentle rhythm of waves under them too.

“I love you, my dear old snake,” Aziraphale says, pulling Crowley into his side. It rings clear as the bells. Crowley breathes in, shuts his eyes tightly. Presses his mouth against the curve of the gentle jaw. _I love you, Aziraphale. Across any world, any lifetime. I'd look for you in the pits of Hell, in any corner of Heaven and all their filing cabinets too._

"I love you."

"Do you want to sleep?" Aziraphale asks, brushing the hair back from Crowley's neck. 

"No," Crowley yawns, his eyes heavy.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes. There is a soft bed in the center of the room, piled with pillows and throws. Aziraphale sets himself into it, opening his arms in invitation. "You're a _terrible_ liar. Get in, my dear."

Laid out against the bed, cupped in the arms of the ocean, the world feels soft. 

"What are you gonna do?" Crowley murmurs, "if I sleep?"

"If?" Aziraphale laughs, "You're fighting a losing battle already, my dear. Well, I'll read, perhaps. And watch you." 

"I finished the translation."

"Oh!" Aziraphale lights up, "May I?"

Crowley shrugs and snaps. "'Course, angel. Anything you like." The pages of the finished myth appear in bed, there in Aziraphale's lap. As Aziraphale begins to read aloud, Crowley's eyes fade out, drifting on into the dark. 

* * *

_There are always deals to be made. Hades loves a deal._

_"Don't look back," Hades had said. Don't look back, don't turn around. Orpheus sets off the way he had come, following the river in, taking the back roads and side alleys. The surface looms pale before him. He cannot hear the sound of footsteps. He has never felt the brush of displaced air, the promise of another's movement. The only heartbeat in his ears is his own._

_He is afraid. (What if you're not there? What if it's a trick? A lie? What if I'm being led out and they're pulling you deeper still? What if I've fucked this up? What if I never see you again? What if - )_

_He shouldn't look back. Shouldn't snap his head around, linger to try to hear movement. Should trust what he is told._

_Orpheus is a lyre player. He knows a liar well._

_He looks back. Eurydice is there, open-eyed and open-mouthed, shock in her face._

_"Eurydice!" He rushes to her, pulls her into a kiss. Mouth to mouth, hope into hope. Please, let me, let this -_

_When he opens his eyes, the world is bright again. There is nothing in his arms but air._

* * *

There is a bed aboard a ship. There is a stolen moment out of time, an eye in a black storm. Outside, the pale hand reaches, closing the eyes of the sick. The village trembles. 

The pestilence is not for them. What might come for immortal men? What might angels and demons fear? Tonight Crowley fears nothing. He thinks instead of gardens and promises. Of beginnings and growing things. Crowley is a gardener. He thinks of the night-blooming cereus, _Selenicereus grandiflorus._ The king of kings. It is swift and mercurial. It is difficult to bloom. If it does bloom at all, then it comes at night and for one night only. Sometimes pleasure is quick in the night, sometimes we take our relief where we can. When we can. This is the strength in us, in Anthony J. Crowley, Demon At Large. To strike forward, looking for the next relief, trudging through the grey. Do not blink, do not look away. Something might bloom.)

Sleep pulls at him. Crowley drifts now in the dark behind his closed eyes, his narrow-point chin dug into Aziraphale's side, tucked under his loving arm. Here, in this room, wrapped in this soft bed and Aziraphale's hands in his red-warning hair, yes, here everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. 

(Did you lock the front door? Is it already here? How many pages are left in the book? Tell me what is coming.

Orpheus, Orpheus, _Orpheus, what have you done?_ )


	7. Heliocentricity

_"Suddenly nothing is as it was  
_ _Where are you now, Orpheus?  
_ _Wasn't it gonna be the two of us?  
_ _Weren't we birds of a feather?"_

Hadestown, _Hey Little Songbird_

  
  
  


_London_

_1601_

The grapes explode in Aziraphale's mouth. Small cataclysms of gentle flavor. He picks them off the stem, with wide fingers, one at a time, his eyes kept on the young actor performing onstage. He constantly scans his periphery, waiting for a shadow to fall across his path.

Aziraphale often finds himself here when at loose ends. Here, wandering the hazelnut and rush-covered ground of the Globe, looking up at the pilfered timbers. It had been built in a hurry two years prior. Aziraphale doesn't always take a chair in the gallery. Sometimes he likes to be right in this very spot, pressed against the stage with the groundlings, close enough to see the sweat on an actor's lip.

Crowley should be meeting him. Yes, Crowley will be here. Any moment now. Another meeting in a long line of meetings stretching back to a once-upon-a-time when they had stood barefoot on a garden wall, looking over a few castaways in the sand. Tell me now, dear reader, where have they not met? You and me, he and him. Coming together like binary stars, orbiting an unspoken center. Do you remember how we began? At the start of this tale, at the start of our own? In the beginning, there was only darkness. You were within me and I was within you. We knew nothing of edges and delineations. Needed no liminal space. There was nothing of me that was not also of you. We were not parted. We did not need light to find each other.

Consider a search party. A floodlight. We are separate now, flung apart. Rent at the seams and dropped anywhere on Earth. 

They keep finding each other. (So do we.)

How has it gone? They had found each other at the Ark. They had found each other in Rome too, trading oysters like drunken dares and bad ideas. Aziraphale had come upon Crowley in Wessex. Had unearthed him in Constantinople (between sheets, in a shared bed).

Once upon a time, Crowley had found Aziraphale in Wales. 

_Doesn’t matter now. Don't think about it. (That was a long time ago.)_ No, don't think about it. Keep focused on the path in front of you. One foot in front of the other, winding your way home.

He picks at his grapes and brushes dirt from pale blue sleeves. It isn't long before Crowley arrives, pushing the door the wrong way, pretending that he had meant to do that. He arrives in front of Aziraphale like a planet to the sun, circling him like a wolf protecting a lair. Like Earth and its heliocentric love. Aziraphale turns to watch him. See the flush of a beard on his chin, fashionable this century. ( _"Do you think you'll keep that?"_ Aziraphale had asked, five or so years ago. Crowley had shrugged, _"Just trying somethin' new. You don't like it then?"_ )

"I thought you said we'd be inconspicuous here," Crowley murmurs, casting a doubtful glance around the Globe Theatre. His hands linger at his sides. Aziraphale watches them, smaller in width and longer in length than his own. "Blend in among the crowds."

"Well, that _was_ the idea." _Not that you'd blend in anywhere, dressed like that._ Crowley, as ever, dressed all in black. His infinite variety comes not in color but texture. There is leather and velvet, brocade and wool. Crowley cannot be fully learned by sight alone but instead by touch. Aziraphale's fingers twitch, exploding an unfortunate grape. He wants to touch. See how the black clothing and the lion's mane of red hair bring out the devil in the demon. The quirk of the mouth like Mephistopheles, the raised brow trying to make a deal. _Sign your soul over to me,_ the look seems to say, _and you can have anything you like._ (Aziraphale knows the truth. There is no gentler shepherd of souls than Crowley. He's had Aziraphale's for so long, cared for it all this time.) 

_You’re all flash. (Keep being this bright. Please. You light the way.)_

"Hang on," Crowley says, frowning. He turns on his heel, spinning to take in the meager production. There is little other than dust and sunlight, the fruitseller and a few leaning bodies. Little more than Richard Burbage onstage, the son of one of the theater's owners, a bored look on his face. Crowley spikes a brow like punch at an open bar. "This isn't one of Shakespeare's gloomy ones, is it? _Ohh,_ no _wonder_ nobody's here."

_(You're wondering how we got here. Shhhh, let me explain. Picture a wide bed on a rocking boat, anchored on the River Severn. The year is 1347. Out on the river, the plague cannot be heard. Out on the river, Aziraphale tastes Heaven in his mouth, his restored power on the back of his tongue. He traces the long lines of Crowley's sleeping face, presses his nose into the red curls too. A burning bush for a feverish kiss, waiting to hear the Word of God. There is a chain around Crowley's neck, two gold rings left there against his narrow chest, his beating heart. Aziraphale takes the chain and unlatches it, pulling the rings off. He wants to set them both on their fingers again, there where they have been meant to be all this too long time._

_He smiles. The sun is beginning to rise. He'll wait until Crowley wakes.)_

"Shh," Aziraphale hisses, hushing Crowley as Shakespeare spies them, picking his way over. Leading with his soft chin and lank hair. "It's him."

Shakespeare stops in front of the pair. There's an imploring, half-apologetic look on his face. "Prithee, gentles. Might I request a small favor? Could you, in your role as the _audience,_ give us more to work with? 

Aziraphale lights up. He's been at every rehearsal and performance of _Hamlet_ this week. It's a promising play, though the tragedies have never been as popular as the playwright's comedies. _Such a pity, really._ "You mean," Aziraphale asks, bright and hopeful, "like when the ghost of his father came on, and I said, _'He's behind you!'_

"Just so," Shakespeare confirms. "That was jolly helpful. Made everyone on stage feel … appreciated. A bit more of that. Good Master Burbage, please. Speak the lines trippingly."

Burbage leans in with a poison-tipped glare. "I am _wasting_ my time up here."

"No, no, you're _very_ good," Aziraphale says, rushing to reassure. "I love all the …" He waves his hands pointlessly. "Talking."

Crowley hasn't said anything but the good humor rolls off him like the smell of baked bread from an oven. Aziraphale breathes in deeply.

"And what does your _friend_ think?" The actor leans forward, gesturing to the demon at Aziraphale's side.

 _Someone could be watching. They could be right around that corner, they could be right behind my shoulder. They could be reading my journal, opening the mail. Please, god, no. (I never write your name. I never risk it. When you send me letters, I burn them until there is nothing but ash and smoke and shiny spots on my fingers where the fire has touched. I never walk home directly after seeing you. I stop at a tavern, wind through the market. Shake the trail off, shake the scent off. Tell me about Heaven like a bloodhound, watching for us to stumble. To trip and fall.)_ There is sweat on his brow, there is sweat on his back. Aziraphale rushes to correct Burbage, blundering on in. "Oh, he's not my friend. We've never met before. We don't know each other." (Crowley's grin has grown wider with each sentence. _Angel,_ he might say later, _don't you think you protest too much?_ )

Someone might be watching. Aziraphale never is unaware.

_(It takes time for the sun to rise. Aboard the Eden, safe in his own bed, Crowley begins to shift, his eyes flickering before they open, his shoulders digging like spades into the bed. Aziraphale leans back, trying to take in all of him. To take in the measure of the room and to forget nothing ever ever ever again. He has lived forever, he will remember everything. The oak of the bedframe and the pitcher of water. The small mirror on the table, the salt encrusted on the little window too._

_"Angel?" Crowley asks, his voice sleepthick and drunk on rapidly fading dreams. His wiry arms shift to hold him up, looking around and frowning. "This is m'boat."_

_"Yes."_

_The frown deepens. Red lines from the pillow crosshatch Crowley's face. "What are you doing here?"_

_Ice water. With a glacier-dunked dread heart, Aziraphale pauses, his hands still lost in the blankets. "Pardon?"_

_"Thought you were doing a blessing-something-thingy-whatever. Wales, somewhere."_

_Consider the rush of ice in veins. The sudden plunge into winter. Bile rises unbidden to his throat. ".... This_ is _Wales, my dear."_

_"Oh," Crowley says. Yawning, shifting against the bed. "So, er, what am I doing here then?")_

"I think you should get on with the play." The grin does not drop from Crowley's face. Aziraphale darts a look over at him, keeping one eye out for the rush of white wings or the inquisitor's glint of a halo.

"Yes, Burbage," Shakespeare agrees, waving up to the stage. All the world's a play, this one more than others. "Please. From the top."

"To be or not to be," Burbage starts again, "That is the question.

"To be! I mean, not to be!" Aziraphale shouts, "Come on, Hamlet! Buck up!" He chances a glance over at Crowley, who is carefully watching the stage. "He's very good, isn't he?" 

Crowley pauses for a moment, his shoulders curved in towards Aziraphale, his body bent like an open envelope. Bent like an invitation. _(God, I want to open you.)_ "Age does not wither, nor custom stale his infinite variety."

Aziraphale swallows, uncertain what he means. _Are you talking about me? Are you talking about us?_ We always know when a dance has been asked, when the music has started. Crowley says this like holding his hand out for a waltz, asking Aziraphale to step in with him.

Aziraphale takes a deep breath. Let's remember still more. Two-hundred-and-fifty-four years ago. Crowley had woken up in his own bed with a blank slate mind. A tabula rasa heart. _You've forgotten that we were in love. You've forgotten what we had, what we were to each other. You remember nothing of that, the tables have been turned. I keep it all. I carry it with me, this weight of knowledge. Who would have thought an apple could be so heavy?_ Not all knives have a single edge. Some have two sides. Some ammunition scatters like duck shot. Some poisons have a delayed effect. Curses too. Not all curses are a clean slice through the heart, all the side-effects spelled out in tiny print on the edge of the bottle. No, no one is compelled to put a warning label on their poison apple, to say _side effects may include losing you._

(Aziraphale remembers when the dark came. _"Oh, look, it's you. About time you woke up,"_ Michael had said, curling her lip in the usual unpleasant way, raising that pike of a brow. _"Guess your boyfriend in the kilt's lost it all then?"_

_"What are you talking about?"_

Gabriel had laughed then. _"Come on, Aziraphale. You don't think we wouldn't expect that one of you would try to undo it. The deal was that if you got your memories back, he'd forget about all that. Hell needed to keep him active. It was a rather good compromise, I have to say. Quite proud of that one."_

 _"Forget - Oh."_ The reality stares him bare in the face. The other shoe has dropped. See the truth now for what it is. Their love is cursed, has been locked up. Aziraphale shifts uncomfortably under Gabriel's watch, wearing their love like a too-small jacket. Only one can wear it at a time. Their love like a too-small goblet, only big enough for one to drink from.

 _"Don't get any ideas,"_ Michael had grinned. Aziraphale remembers it still, remembers it perfectly, all this long time later. _"You know what will happen if you do anything."_

A memory of a lover, of being loved in return. Locked-up with a knife to its throat. This single-serving memory, this loneliness of the long-distance runner. There is only enough here for one.) 

Now, centuries later, in a world ruled by the Virgin Queen, Crowley circles him, his oilslick-black boots kicking up the ochre-spit dust on the ground. Aziraphale stays still, keeping his measured distance. 

"What do you want?" Aziraphale asks. 

"Why ever would you insinuate that I might possibly want something?"

"You are up to no good."

"Obviously," Crowley agrees, dipping his chin in a paced nod. His eyebrow raised, teasing Aziraphale like a snake-charmer. "You're up to good, I take it? Lots of _good deeds_?

"No rest for the well, _good,_ " Aziraphale sighs. He gives in to a minor confession. (It is impossible to keep Crowley at arms' length.) "I have to be in Edinburgh at the end of the week."

"Oh?" 

"A couple of blessings to do. A minor miracle to perform. Apparently," He turns, furrowing his brow, tearing at the grapes in his hand. "I have to ride a horse." 

Crowley grimaces. They've commiserated about this before. (There had been a night, somewhere in Paris, where Crowley had bemoaned the world's preferred mode of transit and viciously sworn up and down on a stack of _Malleus Maleficariums_ that if _anything_ should ever replace it, he would never touch a horse again.) "Hard on the buttocks, horses. Major design flaw, if you ask me," Crowley agrees. He pauses, tossing the conflagration of his hair over his shoulder. Aziraphale tries not to follow the movement. "I'm meant to be heading to Edinburgh too this week. Tempting a clan leader to steal some cattle."

"Doesn't sound like hard work."

Crowley shrugs, a lazy jangle of his narrow bones in a black doublet. Aziraphale thinks of hollow-boned crows and their stygian feathers. The pressure of the deep, the color of the bottom of the ocean. The furthest reaches of space. "That's why I thought we should - Well, bit of a waste of effort, _both_ of us going all the way to Scotland."

"You _cannot_ actually be suggesting what I infer you are implying."

"Which is?" 

Take a deep breath, count it out against your ribs. Aziraphale tries to be measured in his walk, to stick to the path. "That just one of us goes to Edinburgh, does both. The blessing and the tempting."

"We've done it before. Dozens of times now. The _Arrangement_ \- "

"Don't say that."

Crowley looks over, dropping the pretense. "Our respective head offices don't actually care how things get done. They just want to know they can cross it off the list."

Aziraphale looks around. Still, even now, there is no one to be seen. Consider the theater, consider the stage. There is no flap of wings, no displacement of air. Just a disaffected actor, just a bored fruitseller. 

"But if Hell finds out, they won't just be angry, they'll _destroy_ you." Aziraphale's tongue is thick in his dry mouth. He bites the inside of his cheek, filling his mouth up with trickles of blood. Fear tastes like salt. Like iron.

 _They won't think twice about it. You think they have no idea, you think they're not watching. You don't remember a thing of what you are to me (what I once was to you). What would they do to you a second time?_ Aziraphale remembers leaving the _Eden,_ waving a friendly goodbye before miracling himself into a set of rooms in another city, in another place. The room had been empty and felt strangely drained. Somewhere he had heard a faint keening sound. It had been a long time before he had realized that it was coming from himself. Aziraphale had retched then, sick down the front of himself. He remembers wrath, yes, and he remembers punishment too. Angels are inhuman and unkind. The four-faced and seven-winged swords of God bearing witness to him and his transgressions.

" _Nobody ever has to know,"_ Crowley leans closer, his eyes visible over and around the edges of the small lenses. Aziraphale does not miss the flicker to his mouth, the artless parting of Crowley's own. (This has happened before, over a thousand years ago. Once upon a time, they had kissed and fallen in. There had been a first time. This isn't it.) "Toss you for Edinburgh."

 _I love you. God, I love you._ (His hands shake. He hides them in the grapes.) "Fine," Aziraphale says, giving in. "Heads."

Crowley flips the coin, slapping it on his hand. He looks up, half an apology on his face. "Tails, I'm afraid. You're going to Scotland."

Aziraphale opens his mouth. Crowley's proximity mocks him. He is dancing just on the razor’s edge. How do you mourn the living? How do you grieve what is right in front of you? _I miss you. I have tasted your flesh and it is my own._ Creature of overgrown moss, hair the color of cardinals' wings. Eyes richer than coins. The cadence of his blood hums ‘ _Crowley, Crowley, Crowley_ ’.

"It's been like this every performance, Juliet," Shakespeare complains, his voice ringing out against the hard-packed earth, the timbered walls. "Complete dud. It'd take a _miracle_ to get anyone to come and see _Hamlet_."

Aziraphale glances at Crowley. 

Crowley shrugs, half a smile there. An indulgent shift of the shoulders, moving to give thanks, to offer Aziraphale the world. " _Yes,_ alright. I'll do that one. My treat."

"Oh, really?" His heart catches. He knows what it sounds like when Crowley does not say _I love you._ He knows the shift of Crowley in service, offering his heart like an apple in an open palm. Aziraphale cannot take it. Not yet. Not this time. _I won't make a deal. I will get us out however I can. I need you to slow down, I need you to take the back roads with me. Please, Crowley, please slow down. I'll figure out a way. This way isn't safe. I cannot kiss you in the open air, I cannot tell the world's stage that we know each other. I cannot call you friend. You don't know that they're watching. I know they've never looked away._

"I still prefer the funny ones," Crowley says, striding off out of the theater. Aziraphale watches him go.

 _Don’t leave me again. Don't you dare leave me here alone._

(How does it go? Remind me. Oh yes. _There's rosemary, that's for remembrance._ )

* * *

It is late. The moon sits high overhead, as nosy as a neighbor.

Aziraphale takes his time getting back. The moon lights his way like a flashlight. Pieces of Hamlet stick in the folds of his brain like a sock lost in a pile of laundry. _Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love._

He prefers to take walks in the night when space, that old nosy ingrate, peers down on him like a lab specimen in a bell jar. Space, cast outward into nothing. Fuliginous. 

_It is for the best._ His misery arches like electrical sparks. His back is tense and he can feel the muscles knotting up between his shoulder blades. Sometimes, when he gets like this, he stays out and finds a tavern or a gathering. Loses himself in wine and conversation. Tonight, however, he has withdrawn to the sanctuary of his own rooms and their masculine, dark furniture. He raps on the desk, bounces his foot, staring unhappily out the window. April is the cruelest month. He steeps tea in a chipped mug. There are no matching ones. The wooden table is battered and wobbles as he sinks back into the chair, stirring. A few long minutes pass. When he reaches for the cup, the heat has long since disappeared from the tea. He has forgotten to drink it again. He stares off into a dark corner, thinking of how to cut himself away.

_I miss you. I have forgotten what you taste like. What you feel like. I play pretend, I make it up. I take your face to bed with me every night, trying to fill in the blanks of what I cannot recall. You were warm but I do not know the exact temperature. You smell like cedar and taste like salt but I have lost the details. This memory of you is as useless as a story. I could tell it and anyone could share it and know as much of you as I do. I have forgotten the rest. All that are left are words and impressions. Whispers. Your love like a footprint in the sand. I don't have you, I only have the spaces you've left behind._

_(I love you. You're falling in love with me again. It's not safe. I can't risk it. I want it all, everything we ever had. Remember, please. Don't let me forget.)_

The scent of tobacco clings to the air. He splashes water on his face from the bowl. Lingers there, bent over it, the water running along the mountain ridge of his nasal bridge, off the tip of his nose and chin too. He is an angel, yes, he has lost no one, there is no one to mourn. He is an angel, yes, he has lived forever, through every death. He mourns them all.

 _Love is supposed to be a happy thought_ , Aziraphale realizes how wrong he’s been. Instead, his heart clenches within his ribcage and there is no salve that can give it comfort. There is a rumor that it is better to have loved and lost but now, with a Crowley washed clean of their history, he knows that's a bald lie. No, it was better before he had known the pressure of Crowley's grip, before he had carefully cataloged the way his blush crept past his dark collar and down his long neck. No, it is better to have known nothing and wished than to have had and lost.

_(Isn't it? Keep reading.)_

There are papers on Aziraphale's desk. Yellowed with the touch of age, curling from overuse. They are two-hundred-and-fifty-four years old, stolen from a fourteenth-century abbey. (Now gone, dissolved. Destroyed. Tintern Abbey is nothing now but walls, yes, and wind too.) Crowley's ancient scrawl is familiar. The spiked ascending letters, the curves of the descent. (How might it go? The minor fall and the major lift?) Once, two and a half centuries ago, Crowley had translated Ovid for him. Had pieced together the old song of Orpheus and Eurydice.

He has read and reread the same sentence three times without a hint of comprehension. The ghost of a headache is starting to form behind his left eye. He rubs his temple. Aziraphale closes his eyes. He focuses on breathing those his nose in measured time. _Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five. Breathe out. One, two, three, four, five._

A knock sounds on the door. He drops his things. The book, the journal, the pen. He takes up a candle. As he draws near to the door, Aziraphale pauses. There is a forgotten wine glass left on the table. He stares at it for a heartbeat, tired and drawn.

Crowley is on the other side. (Crowley is always on the other side.) Aziraphale's breath catches in his own throat like a fly in a spiderweb. Crowley's eyes glitter over his lenses, his own breathing rapidfire. Scattershot. 

"Let's go together," Crowley says, spilling out before Aziraphale can say anything. "Be more fun that way, you and I." 

_You can't be here. (I want you to be here.) Don't look at me like that, leaning in, that pulse in your throat. (I know the way it feels in my hands. I know how to make it jump.)_

"My dear fellow," Aziraphale says. He doesn't move forward. He doesn't move backward. "We can't - we'll be surely seen - "

"They won't see us. They don't give a damn about us, yeah?" Crowley runs one long-fingered hand up and down the doorjamb like he might along a spine. "Come on, just think about it. Spot of fun in Edinburgh. Nice little getaway. We'll get plowed at every pub along the Royal Mile. I won't even pretend to be the ghost of David Rizzio. I mean, not if you're there. I mean, you know, it does sound pretty wily. You could - " Crowley keeps his eyes wide and a smile on his mouth. "Thwart me."

_God, please. Yes. I want to go. I want to climb Arthur's Seat with you and look out over the city. I want to watch you glue coins to the road and change the wording on prayer books. I want to take your hand along the river and not have to let it go._

Aziraphale swallows. "It's not safe."

Crowley leans against the doorframe, lithe and strong. Aziraphale wants to reach out and touch. To reassure himself. His slender collection of angles wrapped in the dark wool. He could be unwrapped like a gift. The shroud could be peeled away three days later, living and risen. Aziraphale knows what he looks like underneath, naked and open. What it looks like where his leg joins at his hip, the exact shade of copper hair between his legs. A man. Something more than that too. 

Aziraphale does not touch. Winter sounds in his veins, a howl of wind through narrow streets and capillaries. 

"Angel," Crowley says, pausing and starting again. "It's _never_ gonna be safe. Not - "

"Please don't." He shuts his eyes, trying to drown out his own memories. There had been a time when they had risked it. It hadn't worked.

"I'll wait then." It comes in a whisper. Fast and determined, pushed through Crowley's gritted teeth. "I won't push, I swear, I won't - "

"I know," Aziraphale says. He doesn't explain further. (There's nothing to say.)

"Can I come in?" Crowley leans into the doorjamb more, hands twitching and fiddling with each other. 

" _Crowley_ ," Aziraphale says. "We could be seen."

Crowley only nods. He leans on one arm, the other dangling uselessly at his side. The snake-slit eyes peering over the glasses. They remind Aziraphale of a burnished censer, gold to give glory to God. (He has gotten good at blasphemy.) Looking into Crowley's eyes is like seeing himself reflected. Infinite and fractal, ever repeating, over and over and over again. Things go unsaid but understood.

“Yeah, okay. Yeah. I know. You're - right. I'll see you when you're back,” Crowley whispers. His breath is ragged. Aziraphale can hear his erratic and threadbare heartbeat. His temporal arteries throb. Aziraphale thumbs over the veins and arteries in his own wrist, pretending it's Crowley's. He looks up again.

Crowley's back is dark as he picks his way down the narrow cobblestone street.

It aches, watching him walk away, his back fading like a ship over a horizon. Yet, between the ache, Aziraphale also feels pride. Is that odd? This pride? _I'll get us there safely, my love. I promise you. I'll find the way out._ Slowly his senses begin to reassert themselves. The coldness of the room moves in upon him in waves. He might fly off in a thousand different directions at once. He could rend the sky with dagger-shaped pieces of his flesh. His emotions course through him. His breathing comes faster and faster and faster. He might explode, he might scream.

_You cannot keep coming around here like this. Holding your heart out like an apple. I knew we shouldn't then. I know we shouldn't now._

(An ancient conversation echoes in Aziraphale's head. The sound of a doubtful creature, a poor excuse for a demon. _You know I've been worrying too. What if I did the right thing with the whole don't eat the apple business? A demon can get in a lot of trouble for doing the right thing._ Aziraphale breathes in deeply, sagging against the doorframe. What is right and what is wrong? He's never known for certain. _Don't play games with us._ ) 

His face catches in the mirror. He looks impossibly older in the light. Peculiar shadows play across his cheekbones. The fire is still in the furnace ( _as_ _red as your hair_ ). The room feels impossibly hot. In the chair, he undoes his hose, reaching between his wire-haired legs. His fist is furious and gives no quarter. No, he takes himself in hand, biting his bruised mouth, trying to muster up the ghost-memory of sharp teeth on his neck. Aziraphale spreads his own legs wider, pretending his hand has never been his own. He strokes himself to the devil's edge, keeping Crowley in his minds-eye. Once, he had had a lover. He remembers this, their shared bed in Constantinople, the twists and turns of the labyrinth of Crowley's body, how Aziraphale had reached within, drawing out the monster (finding no monster there at all). 

_Come for me,_ Crowley had once said to him, kissing the side of his ear, drawing another hand across his breastbone. His solar plexus too. So he does. (He always does when Crowley asks.) After he comes, his skin pricks with cooling sweat. The rings on his chain, (hidden well under his clothing, buttoned up to the chin) sit heavy against his chest.

He sighs. No one hears it. His heartbeat slows. He puts himself away, washes his hands. Drops himself back into the wingback desk chair, running his unsteady hands over the pile of pale parchment. Aziraphale spreads the papers out. His hands there now across the page, the dark ink smudging his palms. Ink made from gallnuts and ferrous sulfate. The same ink, the same pages. The same old story.

Aziraphale has been adding to the story.

* * *

_Eurydice woke alone and underground. She was cold and aware that she was Nowhere. She brushed her hair from her face, brushed the blood from her nose. The underworld looms out around her, a dark cave filled with night. The walls are damp. Stonedrip stalactites._

_To her right, there is a warm gleam. A fire, a forge. Well-lit and promising forever. She could go right. It would be simple, it would be easy. She would never be cold, she would never be hungry. Not in Hades' arms._

_The left way is the long back road. Winding and rock-strewn. Cold and dark and damp._

_Eurydice wipes the dirt from her face. She goes left._

* * *

Aziraphale sets the quill down, his own handwriting in a flourish compared to Crowley's spidery own. His mouth is set and determined. He curls his hand into a fist, resting there on his own thigh. _This isn't over. After Eurydice was taken back, no one ever asked her what happened next, did they?_ _I'll get us out. I'll find a way._

Tell me, have you been listening? Orpheus looked back, yes. But let's look again and see what we find. 

You see, this one's for Eurydice.


	8. The Babylonian Captivity

_“Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.”_

Anne Carson

  
  
  
  


Let's take a moment. Take stock of ourselves and what we've found. I’ve been telling you of water and wine, of ships and the rivers they sail too. This is a story of water. Of fading out and coming in again.

(Not of fire. No, not yet.)

Lake children know water. Ocean people, sea creatures. The water takes what it will. If you’re lucky, sometimes it coughs it back up again. The tides come in, the tides go out. Here we go round the prickly bush, telling the same old story. Maybe this time it goes differently? Ends on a new note? Can we look again for pages we’ve missed? Can we add to it? Once a story is complete, is the book forever shut?

Tell me, dear reader, tell me what happens to stories once they’re over? Once they are in your hands, your pen behind your ear? Go on then, you’re the author now. Tell it with me. Give us a new ending. Pluck it from the deep. A shipwreck rebuilt. Make this one from steel. Make it unsinkable. You and I, we are the keepers of endings. We can change them if we like.

Let us go then, you and I. Tell me a story. Make it count.

* * *

_Paris  
_ _1793_

  
  


The room is very warm. Crowley shifts his leg under the table, resettles his crimson coat. The room is painted cream and mint. Crown molding on the walls, a tiled floor beneath his feet. Aziraphale has finished his own thinly folded crepes, the butter melted and glistening on the white ceramic plate. He's moved on to Crowley's own (uneaten) dish. Gruyere cheese and caramelized onions, ham and egg too. 

Outside, beyond them, Paris burns. It's not his fault.

Not _exactly_. Crowley hadn't _caused_ the revolution but he had gotten curious after the commendation had popped up. He'd nipped across the Channel, wanting to see the devil for himself. It had made him sick, watching the guillotine fall. There was a butcher's kindness to the efficiency of it, to the simplicity of the thing, letting gravity do the dirty work. He admires it and reviles it simultaneously. 

He's been here for months. Yes, months, quietly whispering to the Third Estate, whispering in Jacobin ears. That serpent-slither, that apple talk of his. _Consider liberty,_ he had said, whispering to the disaffected. _Consider equality too._ (It was the same voice he had used to tell Eve about the apple. _It wasn't a temptation, I just let her know what was up. I gave her options. S'not fair, expecting someone to make a choice without options._

 _"What will it do?"_ She had asked. 

_"It will let you learn. It will let you see the world as it is. You will feel more. To be fair, it will be both good and bad. There will be pain. You can live forever here, kept never knowing and never dying. If you take it, you'll die someday. But you will also learn to love."_

_"What is love?"_

He had almost eaten of the apple himself then. _"The only reason worth living."_

Eve had eaten the apple. Taken a firm bite from the side, juice down her chin. Adam too. Crowley had never had a chance to ask if they had come to regret it. He'll never know. He's never known.)

Aziraphale sits across from him at the creperie, his neck safe in his cream ruffles, the absurd revolutionary's cap slipping off the seafoam-pale hair. The executioner's coat and sash still there, still wrapped around that untouchable form. Crowley closes his eyes and there's an image of how he had found the impossible angel. Those buffskin breeches, that finely-worked and detailed coat.

"I know your people do not send 'rude notes'," Aziraphale says, the fork halfway to his mouth, the crepes dissected on his plate. Apple compote gleams in the light. "But, my dear, don't you ever - worry about what they would do?"

"Hey, as long as you don't tell anyone that you popped over here in satin pumps and gold trim and that I had to come to dashing heroics to get you out of it, won't matter."

"I don't mean that." Aziraphale's hand on the fork is very still. Crowley's heart races. They have never been this close to talking about it before. It has never been like this. He can still hear the way Aziraphale had said his name in the Bastille, as if he were Turkish Delight set in front of him. A grouse to inhale, a port to quaff. _Crowley!_ Aziraphale had said. His blood still stumbles at the way Aziraphale had looked him over, that once-over and bounce, that _good lord,_ as if Crowley were the one being outrageous.

"Yeah, angel," Crowley murmurs. He fingers the stem of the glass, his spine sloshed in the chair like spilled wine. His dark coat billows around him, his calves and the fist of his other hand are impossibly tense. "I know."

"They would destroy you," Aziraphale says. His sotto voce whisper hardly audible over the din of the creperie. He doesn't look Crowley in the eye. 

Crowley arches a dark brow like a scared cat. He shrugs and quirks his lip. "They're dead welcome to try."

Aziraphale goes very pale. His skin as ashen as a burial shroud. Crowley watches how his lips press very thin, how the pulse marks his throat just there above the white ruffles. _(I could unwrap you. Would you like that? Would you let me? You'd never have cruel hands on you, never touch a dirty Bastille floor. Do you remember the moss patch in the Garden? I know a place, very similar. I've grown roses there and aster too. I've grown grapevines and apple trees. I've planted peonies because you mentioned them once. I would lay you out there and no one would come, no one would see us. We'd be safe. I'd find some way to make sure. Some way to keep them off of us, away from us. Some kind of protection. Insurance. I would tell you that I love you in every breath (because I can tell you in none of them now.) I would touch you with hands like ivy and kiss you with a mouth like tulips and if you wanted violets, I'd grow violets under your head, a pillow for you and your hair too. I would be careful. I would love you carefully.)_

"If - " Crowley says, his mouth desperately dry. "If that … was an option. If you wanted." He pauses, tries to tell his heart to calm. It throws itself against his ribcage, his blood is a river of fire. (He's a hellthing, he should be used to it. He's not.) "I'd be careful."

"How?" The pale eyes slowly come up to catch Crowley's own. They shine like a globe, blue and amber, green and grey. Like a child's marble. Like an ocean. Aziraphale holds him pinned there, unmoving and careful, as if he's brought a knife to Crowley's throat, asking him how they plan to escape.

"Dunno. Some kind of insurance." He looks up, over at Aziraphale. See how Aziraphale doesn't look at him, how he studies his fork, the smear of jam on the plate. The weave of the tablecloth. "It'd be worth it."

Aziraphale's hand absently comes to rest at his neck, as if stroking something that lies beneath his clothing. He speaks in an empty voice, as though he is far away. In another time, maybe. In another place, perhaps. _Where have you gone?_ "You don't know that."

"Yeah, Aziraphale," Crowley murmurs, drawing his glass closer to himself. He drains it. "Yeah, I do."

* * *

Sometimes Crowley lets his mind drift. He fantasizes. Imagines. He has a wide imagination. Look inside, take a peek. Past pale skin and angles like broken glass. Past his pencil scribble glare, his clothing as black as bone char. Past hair like redshift, always moving away.

He has favorites. He doesn't know why, where these fantasies have come from. A stolen night in Rome. A wide bed in Constantinople. An inn in Wessex. A field in Tuscany. An abbey in Wales, white wool pushed up over sun-round hips.

Yes, his imagination runs away with him.

_Picture it, a world that doesn't need us. A world that cannot touch us. There's nothing tangling around our feet, there are no halos to catch on clouds. Nothing up in the sky but air. Sometimes you look at me and I think you've got a little spot of a daydream in your eye too._

_Sometimes I remember waking up in bed, there on my ship. I don't remember why you were there, you've never told me. (I've never asked.) You were and you were wearing white linen. My chest was bare. When I woke and looked at you, I thought for a moment that you might kiss me._

_I think about it every day._

_Always._

* * *

_London, St James Park_ _  
_ _1862_

We'll skip ahead, pick up the next thread, turn down this bend of the river. 

It is a cool day. Late April, bright and dry. _Meet me at the park. Two o'clock,_ Crowley had said. Whispered it even. And now he finds Aziraphale here as promised, standing resolutely before the duck pond, French bread in his wide hands. The sun glimmers on the water. There is a soft wind through the mulberry trees. It's cool, still early in the year. Summer will come and with it, the coats will fall. Right now, the sun warms Crowley's back, piercing through the black wool. 

(Black wool, he’s worn black wool in so many centuries. Across so many lives.)

Sometimes, today included, Crowley doesn't go to Aziraphale immediately. Sometimes he holds back, waits a little. He watches Aziraphale move through the world without knowing he's there. The looks on his face that are not Crowley's, the set to the shoulders given to those who are not Crowley. He takes this moment and makes a memory of it, filing it away with the rest, stealing images of Aziraphale like scraps from a table. (He'll take whatever he can get.)

Crowley fingers the note in his pocket. His nerves like a frayed knot. His back and shoulders are perfectly steady, the stretch of his arm very still. His nerves are in his hands, trembling in a pocket. _Don't back down. Don't be a coward. Don't be fucking useless. Get a grip on yourself._ He walks up next to Aziraphale. A shadow to the sinister left. 

"Crowley!" Aziraphale turns slightly. It is not exactly a public acknowledgment but the delight in his voice is as good as creme anglaise. It slides down the back of Crowley's throat.

"Was that a whole baguette? The _entire_ thing?"

"Erm," Aziraphale fusses in the broad light. Cirriform clouds drift high above them in the vast blue of the sky. 

"It was. You've given them a feast, haven't you?" Crowley grins. "They're gonna riot when it's back to birdseed, you know."

"Oh, _hush_ ," Aziraphale says, his mouth curling in a smile. (Crowley will do anything for that smile. Any antic, any gesture. He finds himself performing for Aziraphale when he tries not to. He stretches himself out to be ridiculous, all for the half-chance of a bit of angelic laughter.) "Besides, _you're_ one to talk."

"No idea what you're on about."

"You're incorrigible," Aziraphale says, throwing another piece of bread. The terrible fondness bleeds through his voice. _I wish I could wrap your voice around me like a blanket. It'd keep me warm at night, hearing you. It'd be enough. I could cover my shoulders and my feet. Nothing would get cold. Just to hear you say it. It'd be enough._ _(Say it. I love you. Say it just once to me. Please. Don't let me go forever without ever hearing.)_

"Well then. You asked me here, my dear. Now, go on."

"Yeah - I'm - " Crowley chokes on his own words. There they are, chickenbones in the back of his throat. He clears his throat like sifting the dirt, trying to pick out the things to save. His mouth works for a moment, floundering. He seizes on the first thing that comes to mind. "Is that a new coat?"

"Oh! Well, yes," Aziraphale's pride paints his words. "My tailor rather suggested something new. Keeping up with the times and all." (Crowley likes the pride in his voice. _Sin sounds good on you.)_

"Looks good, angel," Crowley says. He means it. (He always does.)

Aziraphale smiles openly at him, as warm as the sun. There is a moment where something like a flame catches. Aziraphale is the flint and he is the tinder. There is a moment where they are both watching each others' mouths, where they are both drawing imperceptibly closer. Crowley dips his head, Aziraphale lifts his own. Crowley's blood comes in shipwrecking waves.

Aziraphale looks away. He turns, seeming to hesitate. Strong fingers tear off another bit of bread, throwing it to the ducks. Crowley never _quite_ understands this dance they do. See here, look at the facts laid bare. He knows that if he turns too quickly, surprising Aziraphale, that sometimes he finds that Aziraphale is watching him with a glimmer of softness. There might be wistfulness in his eyes. There might be, perhaps even, love. (Not even Crowley could miss that, all the love in Aziraphale's hesitant face.) 

_Why not? Why is the Arrangement okay but nothing else? No one's watching us, angel. No one cares. No one will notice if you stay the night once in a while, if you let me take you to dinner._

"We could get lunch," Crowley ventures.

Aziraphale darts a look around. "My dear - "

"We did it in Paris. The crepes, remember? It was fine." He spreads his hands out as if to say _see, look, there's nothing, nothing happened._

"I don't want to risk it, Crowley," Aziraphale says firmly. "I can't imagine what Hell would do to you if they saw us." 

It's an echo. An old refrain. Crowley remembers it. He hasn't forgotten. He hasn't forgotten that moment in 1601, dancing around the obvious. _"Hell would destroy you if they found out,"_ Aziraphale had said. It hadn't been about the Arrangement. No, not about a simple favor trade, a little deal. No, they'd done that already, dozens of times by then, without this concern from Aziraphale.

No, that had been something else. It had been something else in 1793 as well, sitting across from one another at the creperie, butter softening Aziraphale's lips (softening Crowley's resolve). 

_I'll risk it. Give me insurance. Let them come for me then. I have never loved before,_ he might say. (That is a bald lie. He falls in love easily and with everything. With a storm swell, with a quill, with old stone walls. With a book, with a pigment. With the smell of smoke and cedar. He has never loved, though, quite like this before.)

"Do you - " Aziraphale asks, then pauses, looking back at the pond. 

"Do I what?"

"Well, do you think it's truly possible to change things? Or are we always to continue to repeat past mistakes? History repeating itself, I suppose. I believe that's the saying."

Crowley frowns, he tucks his cane into the crook of his elbow. One hand pulls the note from his pocket, keeps it hidden in his dark glove. "Not sure I follow, angel."

"Indulge me? It's purely a … hypothetical question. An exercise, if you will."

 _Why does this feel important?_ What is there to change? Nothing, Crowley wants to change nothing but the distance between them. To press closer, to eliminate the interruption of these few inches between their bodies, to kiss Aziraphale over and over and over again, at least once for all the times he did not. (They would be there for weeks. Unparted.) _Do you mean the Fall?_

(Aziraphale might mean the Fall. The room of the tribunal had been white. Crowley had borne a different name then, his hair had been licks of flame. It had been Gabriel who had handed down the sentence. _She's disappointed in you,_ he had said. The ground had opened up beneath him, letting him drop. We never know the last day our mother will pick us up, hold us close. That had been the last day. He has been unheld ever since. Untouched. Unforgiven. Unloved.) 

"I think anything can be changed. If you know how to. Doesn't mean it's easy though, you know?"

"Certainly not easy."

 _Are you talking about us? Are you talking about changing what we are to each other? Something more, maybe? Please._ He breathes in deeply. You see, underneath it all, Crowley is the worst of all possible things. An optimist.

"I mean, if it's something worth changing, something worth doing or hoping for - well, yeah, I think it's possible."

Aziraphale nods. He doesn't say anything. He shreds the bread with his smooth hands, his manicured nails. Crowley wants to take it from him, to take those hands in his own. 

He wants. Wants and cannot have.

"Look, I've been thinking. What if it all goes wrong?" Crowley hesitates then, uncertain of how to phrase it. Uncertain of how to say _we're in love. We've never spoken about it. We've never shaped our tongues to say the words, we haven't dared in any language._ "We have a lot in common, you and me."

"I don't know," Aziraphale says, furrowing a pale brow. "We may have both started off as angels, but _you_ are fallen."

 _Yeah, I know. Look, I don't need the reminder. It's not something you forget. (I remind myself every day, calling you angel. Knowing what you are, why I can't say anything, why I can't reach out and touch.)_ "I didn't really fall. I just, you know sauntered vaguely downwards." Crowley pauses and breathes in. The sun feels impossibly hot bearing down through his black coat. Through his hat. "I need a favor."

"We already have the Agreement, Crowley," Aziraphale says, something steel and sturdy in his neck. The breeze bends the rushes of the pond, rippling the water. "Stay out of each other's way. Lend a hand when needed."

"This is something else, for if it all goes pear-shaped." 

A black swan drifts by. Crowley thinks about mulberry trees. _I could crowd you up against one right now, the bark of the tree against your coat. I could take your hat in my hands, careful not to crush it (I know how you like your things). I could lift your chin with a finger. I'd be slow, patient. I'd let you decide. Would you let me in? (Kiss me, please. Please. Please. I have never been kissed.)_

"I like pears."

"If it all goes wrong, I want insurance."

"What?" 

"I wrote it down," Crowley says. His voice sounds nervous to his own ears. Words tumble out too quickly, not even stopping to ask him for permission. "Walls have ears. Well, not walls. Trees have ears. Ducks have ears. Do ducks have ears? Must do. That's how they hear other ducks."

The note passes from Crowley to Aziraphale. Aziraphale unfolds it in his ever-careful hands, his shepherding and curating hands. When Aziraphale looks up at Crowley again, his color is familiar. Pale as a shroud, white as bleached bones.

"Out of the question," Aziraphale hisses. His brow furrows. Crowley glances away but not before he sees the cloud cover in Aziraphale's eyes. Stormbrew.

"Why not?"

"It would _destroy_ you. I'm not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley."

"That's not what I want it for," Crowley insists. "Just insurance." _I want it for us. You know that. I know that. I'll keep the devils off our backs, keep us away from them all. I'll take on Hell for you. (Heaven too.) You're worth it. You want to change the world?_

_Start here. With me. Give me this._

But Aziraphale's breathing comes faster, something terrible in the lines of his face, scribbling out his ruined composure. "I'm not an _idiot,_ Crowley. Do you know what trouble I'd be in if - if they knew I'd been fraternizing?" Aziraphale shakes his head. "It's completely out of the question."

 _"Fraternizing?"_ Crowley hisses. Fire in the hole, fire in his blood. _How fucking dare you call it that._

"Well, whatever you wish to call it. I do not think there is any point in discussing it further." The note is still held in Aziraphale's firm hand. His suddenly unsteady hand. Crowley watches his own letters dance there, asking for _holy water._

"I have lots of other people to _fraternize_ with, angel," he bites. _Fraternizing._ The word sticks like burnt molasses on his tongue, acrid and unpleasant. Impossible to remove. He pictures this, _fraternizing_ with other people. Doing this dance with someone else. Someone else's mouth, how they'd take him in, easy as you please. Kiss him, bring him into their bed. Crowley has never been kissed, never been touched. He falls for a moment into this heated nightmare, imagining other voices in other rooms. (He might be sick.) 

"Of course you do."

"I don't need you."

"Well, and the feeling is mutual, obviously,” Aziraphale snaps. Yes, he snaps his mouth and snaps his heels, turning like a spitroast, moving far away. (The tide goes out.) Crowley watches the note burn, thrown on the water of the pond like a piece of bread.

"Obviously," Crowley mocks, tossing his head. There are only the ducks to hear him. 

Only the grass. 

Only the wind.

* * *

The walk home had taken a long while. He'd gone the back way, kicking every tussock of grass as he went. Once inside, he hangs his coat up, drops the sunglasses on the little hall table. He rubs at his nasal bridge, trying to punish the ache behind his eyes. His fingers run over the petals of the roses on the table. Blush-colored today, the thorns removed. He hadn't grown these but had bought them himself, on impulse. (It had been a bit of a good luck wish.)

_Bugger all that for a lark._

His hips swing as he stalks with his praying mantis body through the rooms. The air is soft and aromatic, thick with chlorophyll. He and his limbs collapse across an ornate velvet-lined chair. Crowley groans, one arm draped across his eyes. This room is small and paneled in rich red brocade wallpaper. Where the afternoon light hits it, the color looks almost like dried blood.

_Tell me I can have it all someday. (Lie if you have to. Let me have something at the end of this. Give me hope like a peach pit, something tangible to hold, even if I have to throw it away eventually.)_

He has always loved Aziraphale. From the start and to the end. It doesn't matter. The snarl in his heart had caught at the very moment those too-big eyes turned around on him, blinking at a serpent slithering past his ankles, taking form in the air next to him. Crowley has never spoken of it. He brings gifts. Trinkets and tickets. Bottles of wine. He had shown up with flowers and chocolates to the bookshop opening and never once opened his mouth to add the words _I love you._ Yes, they have been here many times. Over and over and over again he had thought they were right on the brink, right on the edge of saying something. _Yes yes yes let me say it. Say it back. Please._

It has never happened. Not once. Not ever. 

(There are particular moments that stand out in his recollection. A time in Rome, millennia ago now, where he had caught Aziraphale's pale eyes over oysters, had thought that _yes maybe this is it, finally, please._ There had been the years they had both lingered in Constantinople, frequenting taverns and drunkenly singing songs. But no, that had not been it either. 

No, there had been many moments in history when Crowley had thought _yes, at last, please, please, please._ None of them had happened. None were to be.)

His thin back slumps against the chair, for several long moments there is no movement but his skinnyboned chest slowly swelling and sinking. His head droops, rust-colored strands obscuring his vision. His head sinks against the arm of the chair, forehead pressed into the woodgrain. _What now?_ Here you go, Crowley, back again to the dregs. Stained and soiled too. He is thrashing and cannot find the way up. There is no one to reach to, the shore is empty. 

Crowley fills a galvanized metal watering can. Waters the plants. The droplets fall across deep green leaves, long stems and curious stamens. Round and round he goes, filling his time with soil and water. His Judas eyes study the red wall as he goes through the room, sinking his fingers into the soil to check dampness. He digs his sharp teeth into his lip. The skin broken at his incisors, split like a ripe peach, pomegranate blood dripping from the ragged puncture wounds. 

(We are our choices, not our impulses, aren't we? Change the script, Crowley.)

He has heard that moving helps, so he paces the length of the room. He wants a whiskey but pours himself a glass of water instead, drinking it while staring out the window, misery stuck beneath his floorboards. Stuck between his shoulder blades too. The glass pane reflects his own self against the well-struck hour of the night. _You don’t have to remind me. I know what I am without your help. Unforgivable, that’s what I am._ A creature made to be backward and inverted. A perverse twist on his once-upon-a-time holiness. He can change his name, change his shape, change where he lives. He cannot cut the core out. Demons are twisted things, mockeries of what they once were, what they could have been. Crowley, who had not always been Crowley, had once had wings like creamline milk and had worn freckled spots of gold on his shoulders too. 

He knows what he is now. Obscene and unholy. His wings, long since put away, are blacker than soot. He was allowed to keep the gold. Made to keep it. See it now, all balled up like a fist in his irises, slashed through by a demon snake.

A monster.

He's so tired. He doesn't understand. _This isn't how it's supposed to go. I've read every love story in history, been there through all the rotten lot of it. I was there when Tobias first saw Sarah and now every wedding vow in a Catholic church talks about them. You love me, I love you. (I can feel it when you look at me. Angel, I know.) This is supposed to be the easy part. Let us risk it. Let us try. You're worth the risk._

Here in the middle of it, what has he found instead? Aziraphale with unsteady hands and asking him if it were possible to change? Those same hands throwing Crowley's heart in the water, letting it burn. Letting the ashes sink.

Crowley scowls, furious at nothing in particular. _At least it's not the fourteenth century._ God, he had really hated the fourteenth century. (When pressed to explain why, he never can. Just something about it lingers unpleasantly. A bad taste in the mouth. Visions of monks and churches, the haunt of buboes. The danse macabre.) Exhaustion creeps in his bones, lurking like an infection. A virus multiplying in his closed eyelids and his even breathing. Crowley aches for dreamlessness. For unawareness. _Maybe I'll sleep for a week. A month, maybe. A bloody year if I like. What the fuck does it matter?_

He stays upright until the last possible moment, when sleepache creeps in with long fingers and he is vulnerable and caves. In bed, his mind wanders. (He’d rather it not, he knows where it will lead.)

 _I’d cry if that would help. I’d crawl. There on my fucking belly, squirming at your feet. (I’ve done it before, been there before. I’ll beg if I have to. I’m above nothing. That’s the point of me, unforgivable and shoved underground. There’s nothing beneath me.)_ His bones are tired. His eyes ache. There is a cannonball in his chest, shot there. Shattering the ribcage, bone shards like shrapnel and lodged there, weighing him down into the deep. 

Sprawled in his bed, one grey pillow shoved under him, tangled in shale-grey sheets, he looks upward. _I'd like to file a complaint._

“God?" Crowley calls, his voice echoing in the mostly-bare room. His amphora-red hair sticking up all over, his warning-yellow eyes narrowed at his Creator. "Are you up there? Are you listening? Do you hear me? You can’t fucking _do_ this. Aren’t you all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, all- _whatever_ \- you had to _know_ what would bloody happen. You threw us in the fucking garden, threw me on the fucking ground, you could have had the decency to burn what was left of me out.”

His voice breaks. "You could have had the decency to - " 

He doesn't know how that sentence ends. (Maybe She doesn't either.) In the Beginning, before the Garden and before the Universe too, God had called the angels forth from the ether. She had built their bones from song, made their skin from melodies. Not-Yet-Crowley had been called forth with eyes made of flaming torches and a face like lightning. His voice had been a multitude. He was fully formed, yes, but young still. God cupped him in her palms, he pressed his face into her soft arms, her shoulder. (Crowley sometimes wonders, imagines being young, held in his mother's lap. If they had been human, She might have smelled of talcum powder and _Oscar de la Renta._ She had loved him once. She had to have, he's certain of it.)

He reaches into the deep of himself, the long march of his memory. He considers the atmosphere. Considers the stars. Casts back through his own history, through human history to the Egyptians and the Assyrians and beyond, out where history darkens and language cannot quite reach. (He does not think about his own arrival in Eden six-thousand years prior as a skinny little sallow-eyed thing with too-wide eyes.)

_We could go somewhere. Pick something, anything you like. We can run away. If you love me and I love you, how the Heaven could this be wrong? How could it be impossible? We can find a moor, I'll build you a house. I'll build you a mansion in a heath, a cottage by the sea. Do you want to leave? Go further? I know every star in the sky, I know which ones are safe. We can hide on Jupiter, we can live forever on Alpha Centauri._

He needs so much. To be touched, to be absolved. _I do not love you except because I love you. I wish you might be fire, I want to burn where you touch me. Leave scars. I don’t want to forget. It is so hard not to say things to you. I am in the Garden with a beautiful boy, trying not to tell him I love him._

Crowley closes his eyes and sees Aziraphale. The love in Aziraphale's eyes, in the bend of his jaw, in his worrying mouth. In this dance, their rituals. _I love you,_ Crowley tries to offer. (Never out loud. Never in words.)

 _I love you,_ Aziraphale says. (Never out loud. Never in words.)

He is very tired. _I'll give it a few months. Maybe in a few months it'll be better. I won't press. I won't push. We'll just go back to normal. That can be enough. It has to be. It will be._ He closes his heavy eyes, sets his optimist heart down. Just for a little while.

In a bedroom, somewhere in Mayfair, Crowley sleeps. A week passes. A month. A year. A decade. He sleeps and the dust falls. (After thirteen years, a quiet visitor slips in every so often. Watch how the dust disappears, how the sheets change. Crowley's hair grows long, down to his waist and beyond. Yes, long, like a river of blood. The tangles are carefully brushed out with gentle hands, the mother-of-pearl brush quietly set aside on his small table.)

And so the years pass. And Crowley sleeps. 

Sleep well, beast. (This isn’t the last. Don’t give up hope.)


	9. Water Water Everywhere

_"With clasping arms and cautioning lips,  
_ _With tingling cheeks and finger tips.  
_ _“Lie close,” Laura said,  
_ _Pricking up her golden head:  
_ _“We must not look at goblin men,  
_ _We must not buy their fruits:  
_ _Who knows upon what soil they fed  
_ _Their hungry thirsty roots?”  
_ _“Come buy,” call the goblins  
_ _Hobbling down the glen."  
_ Christina Rossetti, _Goblin Market_

  
  
  


_Eurydice is very tired._

_Her feet ache, her sandals are coming undone. The road out of Hell is long and the soles of her feet are raw and blistered, her eyes tired of the dark stone ceiling. It is not a straight shot out of Hell. The path is not even and well-lit, not clearly marked. It weaves like a labyrinth in upon itself, circling over and back again. Sometimes Eurydice finds herself once again where she was before, standing at a bricked-up dead end. She looks down at her hands, the bit of red thread tied around the smallest finger. Once, long ago, Orpheus had promised that he would be holding the other end, that he would get her out._

_That was before he had looked back. Now, it's all in her hands. Rat bones crunch under her steps. She breathes in deeply._

_"Which way should I go?" she asks and asks often._

_"Stay here," the answer comes. "It's safe. There are monsters out there."_

_Everyone has a different answer. Everyone says the same thing._

* * *

_London  
_ _2007_

“The end of the world,” Aziraphale murmurs. He tries to keep a leash on his eyes, to not let them linger on Crowley too long. They've been drinking steadily for nearly six hours and dark shadows loom at the edges of Aziraphale's vision. Umbras and penumbras, places to get lost within. When he sees Crowley out of the corner of his eye, he sees a kilt and a dark tunic. He sees a black doublet in the age of Gloriana. He sees a severe suit and a top hat over ginger-burnt hair, asking for a favor. Aziraphale tries not to look. He tries not to drag the word _apocalypse_ over his tongue, to test it with his teeth. From the Koine Greek _apokalypsis_ , meaning _to reveal, to lift the veil._ If you will, meaning _revelation._ This prison of silence and secrecy. Aziraphale carries the measure of it on his back. Two stone tablets. Ten commandments. All of them inscribed to say _don’t say anything, not til’ you see the whites of the sky._

“Got it in one,” Crowley drawls. He reaches for the bottle. The gaunt tendons of the back of his hand flex as he curls around the neck of the wine. Aziraphale draws a breath in, trying not to trace the map of his beautiful bones. _Don’t reach out, don’t touch. Don’t forget._

“Finis terre. Terminus est. The _apocalypse._ ” The trouble with being an ethereal being, called forth from a choir of song in the very dawn of time, is that he's known this was coming. Not the way humans do. No, not that, the nebulous concept of _the end_ somewhere at the back of their books. Humans get a bit of a pass. They keep moving on through their chaptered existence, knowing there are still hundreds to thousands of pages before they get anywhere near the end. They even, some of them, have a little hope that it doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. Their lives are raindrops compared to the oceans of Aziraphale and Crowley's existence. This, even, this stolen bit of time on Earth, is nothing. Someday it will end, someday they will be incorporeal again and cast out into the stars. Crowley will be a black hole and Aziraphale will find himself blueshifted and falling toward it, always subject to gravity. Crowley is all the gravity he needs.

Yes, the end of the world. He's not quite ready, not for Revelation.

“Yep,” Crowley mutters, popping the _p._ Aziraphale watches the way his broom-skinny lips shape the words, trying to memorize this untouched other. The end of the world will come and they will head back to their respective departments, bodiless and unmixed. Back to Heaven, back to Hell. (Aziraphale does not think of water, of this body discorporated. Untouchable and ruined with nothing of Crowley to pour back inside.) "Hell in a handbasket. Or a bassinet, whatever. I handed him over."

Aziraphale nods.

"Thought about crashing the car," Crowley says, not looking at him. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, clouding over on a pile of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino. _Cosmicomics_ and other stories. "You know, just kinda, cutting it out at the source."

"Oh, my dear. It wouldn't have changed anything."

"Yeah," Crowley mutters. "I know."

"We have to - do as we're directed. Follow orders. You're a demon and - "

"I _know_ what I am, Aziraphale," Crowley hisses. His tone is as sharp-edged as torn steel, rusted out. Careful how you touch it, how you handle it. How you turn the words over. "I sold the world."

The end of the world had started in the night. Four-thirty in the morning. Still dark, still a nothingness in the bleak of night. Hell had brought forth the Antichrist onto the earthly stage like firing a cannon onto Fort Sumter. Aziraphale tenses his jaw as he remembers how Gabriel had spoken of the inevitable conflict. _As if we had won already. With God on our side._ (With God, how can they lose?) Uriel has said it would be easy. _Three months, tops._

He watches the reflection of the bookshop’s Tungsten lights dance in his cabernet like little bonfires. Little fireworks everywhere. His heart as shattered as a dropped glass. "You didn't have a choice. Delivering the Antichrist. You know that, you're just doing what a demon should."

Crowley looks up, something odd and bright in his glare. "Why the fuck did I Fall then? If I didn't even push back?"

Aziraphale holds his breath. "You will."

There's a huff. "Yeah, well. Maybe."

"You _will_ ," Aziraphale insists. _I'll help you. Somehow._ He doesn't like the pale smile on Crowley's face. "Do you still have - "

"Have what?"

"What I gave you. Forty years ago."

The grandfather clock counts out the long minutes that could contain sounds and syllables. Could contain hands brushing and knees knocking together, could contain heartbeats and a mouth pressed to another. Hands in soft hair and the lift of chins by careful and shaking fingers. This stretch of time contains none of it. "Yes," Crowley says. "I do."

"Ah," Aziraphale nods, sipping his wine to hide his mouth, to find something to do with his useless hands. "Oh, well, good."

_Don't spill it. Be careful._

* * *

  
  
(How did we get here? Let’s back up.) 

_An unnamed church in an unnamed town  
_ _1967_

  
  


The stone floor echoes below Aziraphale’s feet as he walks in. The presence of the church leans steadily around him, the dust heavier here than anywhere else on Earth. He clutches his hat in his uncertain hands, fussing his thumbs at the brim. His head feels too bare here, terribly seen. Revelation: The last book of the Bible. St. John of Patmos had known more of the end of the world than had ever been in Aziraphale’s reports. _The angel and the dragon,_ the spit-frothed saint had said. Yes, they’d be there at the end. At the end of days, the stories all go, they will wrestle.

There are always angels in the end, there at the battles we ride into. The coming inferno of our expanding sun. Fire and flames. Ragnarok. There is always a dragon too. A serpent. Something scaled. (Jormungandr, maybe, keeping his jaw unhinged, large enough to wrap around the continents and the oceans too. To use Everest like a toothpick, swallow down the lot of us. After eating us whole, he’ll burp the geyser at Yellowstone. Say _sorry about the mess.)_

(A memory. Crowley’s grey-dark flat. Faint light through the windows like a modernist painting. The Guernica-twisted wreckage of the sharp edges and dark shadows of this strange Mayfair cave. A statue. An angel and a demon tied up like a cherry stem. Aziraphale had given a dry laugh, running his hand along the knots of their arms and legs, cut in marble. _“My dear boy,”_ he had said, _“Are you sure they’re wrestling?”)_

The long rows of pews are mostly empty. Aziraphale takes a seat. Nearby, a woman is praying. Her face is wet. He says a prayer for her under his breath. It sounds like a hymn. 

“Are you alright?”

“I lost someone.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale fishes for a handkerchief in his coat pocket. It had been new in the age of Victoria yet still, it is well-kept. Perfectly preserved. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.” 

She blows her nose. “It’s okay. Expected.” 

“Still.” 

“I suppose the end comes for us all, doesn’t it? Why does it always feel like a surprise?”

He turns, shifting on the unforgiving wood of the pew. “I’m afraid I don’t know.” _The end. There must be an end, mustn’t there?_ Contemplation threatens him. He shakes his head a little, trying to shake it off. They are quiet for long minutes. The only movement in the church is the dust, falling through the window’s gold afternoon light. 

“It’s just that - there were things I’d never said.” Her hair is pale, a dishwater blond. Around her neck is a simple silver cross on a thin chain. Her hands fret in her lap, wrapped around a prayer book (as red as hair). Aziraphale watches her fingers trace the leather, the rises and the falls of the embossing, the bump of the spine. The movements look familiar. Hands that cannot do as they like (there is no one to reach out to), so they find other things to touch instead. Aziraphale swallows, his eyes hot. They, the two of them, are both studies in substitutions. 

“You can say them in prayer,” he offers. “Give them to the Lord.” 

“It’s not the same, is it?” 

“No," he admits. "It's not."

“It just happens like that,” she says, looking down at the book. “You think you have time. You’ll get around to it. You think it doesn’t matter if you say something now because you can do it tomorrow. But that’s not always true. It can change in an instant. One moment you have time, the next, you’re all out.” 

“I suppose.”

“Do you have the time?”

“Quarter past four.”

“Thank you. I should go.” She gets up, collecting her bag. Aziraphale looks up, watching her. The church looks like a still from a movie. A diorama or nativity scene. It doesn’t feel real. 

“I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

She smiles. “Thank you.” Then, moving through the pew to the aisle, she turns back. “Better still, just promise me you won’t make my mistakes.”

“And not say something?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs then, putting on her coat. “We’re only here for a short while. What’s the point if we don’t make use of the time we have?” She offers a small, sad smile. "You'd be surprised who is listening."

Aziraphale nods, swallowing. _Gather ye rosebuds while ye may._ "May God be with you."

"And with you, Mr. Fell." 

After she is gone, the church is nearly still. Aziraphale focuses on breathing. _I know what I need to do. Can’t You find a way? (Do I have to find a way myself?)_ Once, in another world, in another century, he had been a man. He had worn white cloth, the scratch of wool familiar and comforting. Under a Welsh sky and a wood cross, he had looked up to God. There, made of flesh and bone, he had kept the comfort in his pocket that he might someday look away. From the dark miasma of the pestilence, the ghost stories told by sailors on their skeleton galleys, here behold Death, a pale rider on a pale horse. From God too. That, if it all became too much to bear, he could doubt God. 

His belief had been his alone then.

Once, long ago, he had had that. (He had had a lover too. A sailor with Scotland in his timbre, with a woolen kilt falling across narrow thighs. A whiplash spine and sparse-haired chest of copper-coil curls. _I love you almost as much as I love the Almighty,_ Aziraphale had whispered then. Crowley had leaned in, smiled a little. Had brushed Aziraphale’s hair back from his face. _I know,_ he’d said.) 

The sound of it. _And with you, Mr. Fell._ He frowns, looking down at the handkerchief in his hand. White and linen, a simple embroidery along the edges. No monogram to be found.

He tightens his jaw. He breathes in, sharp and swift. There in an empty church in a nowhere and nothing town, he looks up the long aisle toward the cross and tips his hat. 

* * *

On the ground floor of a nondescript office building, Aziraphale casts a strange look at both sets of escalators. Two options, going up or going down. 

He turns to the side and opens the fire door to the stairs. The back roads. The long way down, the rough way in. The road to hell. Rocks interrupt his path and Aziraphale trips over them in the long dark. Scuffs his leather brogues on flotsam and jetsam too. Rivers and creeks wind in complicated patterns like tangled threads. Never the right river, never what he seeks. He presses on, knowing what he is looking for. The sky opens in places, dark yellow and tornado-torn. Dust swirls in strange light. 

_Don't look, keep walking,_ he tells himself. Along the way, there is a market. Half-broken stalls loaded with apples and quinces, lemons and oranges. Plump unpicked cherries. Melons, yes, and raspberries too. Aziraphale's stomach twists, he ducks his chin to his chest to pull in a breath. _Don't linger._ (The underworld is a jealous lover. These hands on your ankles, like ropes of seaweed and half-starved risalkas. _Stay here, stay with us,_ the after-everything calls. _Don't look back up. Don't worry about the surface, don't worry about ever being hungry again. There are no winters here, no summers too. Stay here, a pomegranate seed for each year you give to us. Peaches for the decades and pears for the centuries. Come buy, come buy. Come and stay. Hearts don't beat here, it will never ache again.)_ He passes the stalls, his handkerchief pressed to his mouth and nose to keep out the sick-sweet scent of the fruit. 

Aziraphale walks. 

He walks.

He walks. 

Somewhere, past all the butcher stands, past the ruined temples and the winking faience statues, there is a river. Bare-branched trees arch over it, scrambling at the yellow-scare sky. The water moves quickly, the rushes singing with the sound of it. There is a woman sitting on a log, ants crawling over her legs. Her cabernet-red dress gathered in her lap, picking the peel from an orange. The segments carefully separated by her delicate hands, laid out in her soft lap. 

"Hello, Aziraphale," she says, not looking up. 

"Who are you?" He asks the dark-haired woman, watching the way her blue veins shift below her pale-paper skin. 

"The person you need to see."

He furrows a brow. "Pardon me, but is this a trap?"

She looks up then, her eyes a kaleidoscope of blue and green. "You tell me."

"You must be ... " He hesitates, studying the way the mud splashes between her toes. The impossible faintness of her skin, sun-starved. Brought low, kept underground. "Persephone."

“Yep. The one and only." She stands up, moving toward him. Pops one orange piece in her mouth. Aziraphale stands still as she circles him slightly, her eyes small and sloped. "I can get you out of here. Both of you. Without strings."

"How did you know - "

"I know _all_ the sad love stories." Persephone holds her arms wide, strong enough to cup the world. Her dress catches the breeze, gold string glinting in the aimless light.

His teeth in his lip, this balloon of hope in his lungs. "How?" 

"You came here for the river, didn't you?'

He nods. "Yes. Tell me how it works. Please."

"Come here." She bends over the bank, brushing back the long grasses and the nosy reeds. “Do you have something tied to him? Something important?"

“Pardon?”

“Is there anything that has a strong emotional connection? That might be used in the ritual?”

Aziraphale’s hands had gone to his neck. There, tucked under his cravat, lies a gold chain with two gold rings. He runs his fingers over the familiar lump at his throat. “Yes. I do.”

“Wash it in the river.”

He nods, his hands shaking as he pulls Crowley's ring from his chain. Here, bend to your knees at the edge of Hell. Let the mother of lovers show you the way to the river, which vines to move away, which bushes to avoid. There is Lethe, yes, and Mnemosyne too. At the edge of the river, they can start over again. His steady hands (unsteady now, this once), wash the gold ring in the river. His breath is sharp-edged, an avalanche of air spilling from him. Aziraphale lets the water run over the ring. Lets it run and run and run. _Please work, please work. I miss you. I need you. I love you. Do you remember how you met me in Rome? Brushed my hair away and kissed my hand. 'Come home with me', you had said. And I went, I always went. I always will. I'm coming now. Even now._

Water, water everywhere. And nary a drop to drink. 

“It will work then?” Aziraphale asks, the ring once more upon its chain, safe and sound beneath his secret-keeping cravat. A ring like the crown of life given to Smyrna, an inoculation against the end of the world. He wonders how it will go. (Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.)

“It will," Persephone says. "The key is the timing." 

"When do I give it to him?"

"Not in this lifetime." 

Aziraphale frowns. "What do you mean?"

"You're smart, Aziraphale. You'll figure it out," she says. "Keep your head low until it's time."

He frowns. When Aziraphale looks up from fixing his cravat, she is nowhere to found. There is only the babble of the river. Only the hush of the reeds. Only the ants and the log too, the orange peels left behind like bright jewels in a dull world. Aziraphale goes back the way he had come, clutching a bottle of riverwater the way Theseus had held the red ball of thread in his hands, marking out the path to take. He will not be incautious. Aziraphale is always careful, always a study in measurements and second-guessing. In measuring twice and cutting once. In the dark, Crowley had tried to lead him out. Had looked back, woken him up too soon. There had been a curse on the backside of their curse. A double-edged sword. _Don’t look back,_ Crowley had been warned. He hadn’t known what to expect. 

Here, deep in the dark, with too many paths whispering of the surface, Aziraphale carries back the river Mnemosyne. A tartan thermos of water taken from the river, a river-washed ring like a ball of red thread. He will be careful, he will mark the roads they take. Somewhere at the center of the labyrinth lives the monster. There in that wide black cavern of the unknown, there is a creature with claws and fangs and wide night-colored wings. 

Aziraphale is not afraid of the monster. (He has a name, the monster does. He has a day that he was called forth, he has a Maker too. The monster has eyes like gold coins and an easy-smile mouth and there, under the scales, is a heart that has beaten since the beginning of time.) 

_Wait for me. I’m coming for you. Wait, I’ll be with you soon._

* * *

Sailors know land before they see it. You can mark your progress in the water by the color of the depths, by the shape of the waves. See the dove and the seagull too, watch how they fly. (Does the dove come back? Pay attention. This has always been about water. Haven’t you been listening? Where are we now?) Aziraphale’s hands shake around a pitcher of water. He sits at his pockmarked kitchen table, there with the crocheted doily and the mail brought in. His chin in one hand and his brows heavy. 

The grandfather clock ticks out the minutes, drawing nearer to the evening. _You'll be across the street soon. Planning that utter nonsense of a caper. Bit rich of you, don't you think? Giving me lip for that church business with the Nazis and then you go off barrelling into something that would get you killed._ _(It cannot be borne. I won't let you risk it.)_

The trickiest parts of sailing, except for widowmaker storms, are casting off and reeling it in. The biggest trouble is near the shoreline, where the ground draws near and rocks scrape the hull of a ship like Grendel and his claws. Aziraphale knows they are getting closer, drawing near to the end. He can hear the quiet buzz of military drill in Heaven. Starch-pressed collars and scabbards. Bayonets and cannonballs. There is a uniform for him too. Before long, he’ll have to wear it. The world split in two, right down the middle. Brother against brother, angel against fallen angel. You either wear the white or the black. For immortal beings, there’s no in-between. There’s no _conscientious objector_ box to tick on the draft card. No, someday far too soon, he might face Crowley across a field with swords drawn. Both with the same beating heart and nothing quiet on the heavenly front. 

Revelation. (He has something to tell Crowley. Something Crowley needs to know. It’s nearly time to lift the veil.) Aziraphale putters about the kitchen. He washes the kettle, drops a few dishes humorlessly in the sink. Without the light, the kitchen is grey and dull. A plate still bears the evidence of his morning toast. Dust plays hide and seek on top of cupboards and under tables. Sometimes, standing alone in his kitchen, he wonders what life he might have led as a man. Mortal and temporary. A missionary. A priest. He closes his eyes and wishes for the release of doubt. 

He is an angel. It never comes. 

_Pity._

He must bless the water. Pour his holiness into a metal cup. What was that he has always said? _Hell would destroy you if they found out?_ Aziraphale has said it often, the words like stretched out arms to keep Crowley at bay. To keep him safe. _It won’t be Hell, will it? This could ruin you. (It could be my fault.)_

This is a story of water. Fire too.

_Do you love me? You do, don’t you? Please, I have to be something good, something pleasant. My hands and wrists are bound by someone else and I cannot fall at your feet. I need you in me and around me. Will you lie down on a bed of moss and roses too? I’ll spend months between your thighs. You have to say it first, love. Please, tell me you love me. It’s so dangerous for me to love you, for me to say it first. Chip away at me, will you? Give me plausible deniability._

_I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. The way I want you. (Do you see the cottage I see? Tell me you can feel the metal key cutting into your skin. Tell me that you know this story is yours. You know they’re all yours, don’t you, darling? I’m sorry to be like this, to be too much. I’ve never imagined you without the seascape at your back, your hair in the wind, freedom in your mouth. I want you cut free, I want your face lifted to the sun. I’ll love you no matter how it goes. I won’t say it if you don’t like. I promise.)_

The light is growing long, evening peeks from around the corner. Aziraphale holds the metal thermos tightly in two hands, cupping the river up to himself. A blessing, a blessing from an angel sunk deep into the water, this holiest of water. This Manhattan Project created by his own words, his own string of golden light. 

He sinks his face into his own hands then. Hours to go until tonight. Hours to go until he will hand this piece of himself over. A handcrafted atom bomb. This damaged love. His wash-rinse-repeat heart aching. Here we go again, around the prickly bush. Aziraphale sits alone in his chair, a half-empty glass of peat-drunk scotch in his idle hand. He listens for the sounds of galleys bearing in with no living crew. He listens for the storm of ghost stories, for the whispers of plague and pestilence. The end of the world is coming. He does not know when, he does not know where it will begin. Perhaps it will be borne out of Issyk-Kul on the backs of rodents, perhaps it will stowaway on ship-hidden brown rats. 

This is the way the world ends (not with fire but water).

_I love you. (I’m just killing time until I can tell you again.)_

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Crowley had asked, frowning. Aziraphale had breathed in then, trying to center himself. Trying to not look at the glittering sequins on Crowley’s dark jacket, at the Beatlemania cut of his hair. Devilry and intrigue roll off of the demon like cheap cologne and Aziraphale aches to lean in and soak it up. Soho’s orange light falls across Crowley’s face, catching on the sharp edges of his aquiline nose, his shovel jaw. _If I reached out and touched you, you’d cut me. My hands would come back bloodied. I love a razorboned thing. (I will cover you with my softness, wrap you up. Keep you safe inside of me.)_

“I needed a word with you,” he says. Several words, in fact.

“What?” The plunge of the doubtful brow has always thrilled Aziraphale. Dark as pitch, the timbre of his voice falling like an angel might, thrown off of a cloud. Aziraphale’s hands shake, so he keeps them safe in his lap, holding steady and unseen. _Don’t look at me. Not like that._

“I work in Soho,” Aziraphale begins. Yes, listen to the stubborn voice, the bullheaded forward motion of his sentences. _I will get through this. I will. For both of us._ He doesn’t look at Crowley. Not now, not directly. “I hear things. I hear that you're setting up a … caper to rob a church.” He pauses and then turns to find Crowley watching him. “Crowley, it's too dangerous. Holy water won't just kill your body. It will destroy you completely.”

“You told me what you think," Crowley says sourly, " _One-hundred-and-five_ years ago.”

“And I haven't changed my mind. But I can't have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So you can call off the robbery.” Aziraphale breathes in. He focuses all his energy on stilling his hands as he hands the thermos over. _Don't be obvious, don't make it worse than it is._ “Don't go unscrewing the cap.”

Hand it over. You’ve got the river in your hands. Aziraphale. Let the river go. (Don’t trip. Don’t spill. Don’t fall.) 

“It's the real thing?” Crowley stares at the thermos in his hands in clear disbelief. His mouth parted, red as a pomegranate. _As red as the fruit the goblin men sell. Come buy, come buy._

“The holiest.” Aziraphale's voice shivers at the thought of the water. It could level an entire circle of Hell if thrown there, tossed out of the air like a Molotov cocktail. 

“After everything you said," Crowley breathes. He looks up. His eyes ever-shielded by the infernal sunglasses. Aziraphale has always known how to go by landmarks. See the parted lips, the softness of the jaw. See how the brows are raised, the rush of Crowley's rapidfire breathing. Hear the sound of his voice, stripped suddenly of armor. “Should I say thank you?” 

“Better not.” _Not for this. Please, not ever for this._

“Well, can I drop you anywhere?” 

“No, thank you,” Aziraphale declines, holding fast to his focus. There are rules. Don't jump ahead and don't look back. It's not time. It's not time. It's not time. His heart beats like a clock, slowly measuring the moments from now until the unknown then. How soon will it come? It is an impossible ache to wait for the unknown. “Oh, don't look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could I don't know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.”

“I'll give you a lift," Crowley leans over slightly further. His words in a tumble. "Anywhere you want to go.”

 _I’m almost there. I don’t know why I’m still afraid (I wish I could follow you)._ “You go too fast for me, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. The orange light falls across Crowley’s face. When Aziraphale breathes in, there's something of vetiver and cedar, a hint of apple. Below his cologne, the tar-like sourness of carbolic soap. (This is how Crowley always is when Aziraphale meets him. His face never turned away, not for long. Freshly shaved. That smell of soap.) 

_Goodbye. (Be careful. Don't you dare leave me here alone.)_

He gets out of the car. Walks back to the shop trying to lecture his spine, to keep his shoulders straight. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look back. Aziraphale keeps his eyes steady on the bookshop, his chest square. Forward, never back. _I say your name. I say I’m sorry. I know it’s not working._ His hands kept in his lap. Aziraphale touches everything but Crowley. Flowers maybe. Books perhaps. His fingers rub the embossing on tooled leather covers. Dig deeper into the names of authors he’s never known than in the hair of the man across the table. He fiddled with his pocketwatch, with the buttons of his waistcoat. He pulls at his sleeves and he brushes invisible wrinkles away. He keeps his hands busy. (Don’t reach out.) He prattles on day after day, something useless about buttercreams. Confectioner-thick American and airy Italian. German buttercream like custard. 

As he reaches the door of his shop, key settled into the lock, a hand falls on his arm. Long and careful, bare-fingered. 

"Angel."

He sets his jaw, not looking over at the man in the black suit, the long edges of Crowley's face. Not knowing what he'll find in the set of Crowley's mouth. (Not knowing how he'll be able to hold back, to keep himself together. _I had a plan. Please don't throw it off. Please don't mess it up. We have to be careful. The dishes are all spinning, all in the air. Please don't shatter them.)_

“How slow then?” Crowley asks softly.

Aziraphale swallows, giving in to the ache in his chest and looking finally at Crowley. At the shadows caught in the lines of Crowley's face, carried in the bags under his eyes. His hair catches in the light from the porn shop next door, the red intensified. It reminds Aziraphale of the Attics and their pottery. The red clay that had once made amphorae and vases, painted with stories of triumphing heroes. Hercules with his broad shoulders, standing with his foot on Geryon’s red face. Smashed now. History again, time again. (He has all the time in the world. So why does it feel like it’s never enough?)

“I don’t know.”

"Anything you want. I can do anything - " The hand on Aziraphale's arm is tense. As if it had been frozen, as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. 

Aziraphale shakes his head. 

Crowley just breathes. "I'll wait."

The key waits in the lock. The bookshop just beyond them, dark and quiet. Littered with books and wine. Good scotch. Memories of Crowley smeared across every surface. _It would have been easier if - If I wasn’t who I am. If I could have been brave enough to follow you. (You can’t come back. The gates are closed. You have every right to ask me to come with you, to make Hell our home. It would be easiest. You never ask me. You never push.)_

“Do you ever - with someone else -“ It comes out before he can stop it. Base, wretched question. (He needs to know.)

“No,” Crowley says. He’s got wind in his voice, hurry to say _no no nothing but you._ “You must know -“

“I know,” Aziraphale whispers, “I just have to ask.” (Don’t imagine it. Beloved fingers in unknown hair. White hair, black hair, red hair. _Not mine._ Unnamed fingerprints on Crowley’s chest, unknown marks on Crowley’s neck. _No one waits forever. No one has that kind of patience. Not even us. I wouldn’t blame you if someone else’s shadow was on your skin; I wouldn’t blame you if you sublet your heart. If I can’t live there, deep inside of you, then give it to someone else. You should be loved often and well. You should hear it every day. Every morning. Every night. I won’t fault you for looking elsewhere. I won’t curse your name if someone takes your hand and you squeeze back. You’re not mine to keep, I cannot ask this of you. (Please ask this of me. I’ll stay forever, keep myself dry. Ask me, beg me, need me. Please.)_

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Crowley shrugs. His falling shoulders plunging like an angel, his _I don’t know_ as wide as a pool of boiling sulfur. (Tell me, angel, tell me. Can you swim? It’s a long way down to pick up something you’ve dropped.)

“Please don’t.” Aziraphale's eyes are shut. _I love you._ He doesn't say it, instead locks it up here in this foul rag-and-bone shop of his heart. 

“Don’t what?”

“Apologize,” Aziraphale whispers. He doesn’t look at Crowley. He can’t. Just breathe. Breathe. Just breathe. _Do you remember when we first met? When everything was new and the only thing that mattered was whether or not you’d kiss me back? We were nothing but kids then, just kids (as much as we could be)._

He hears Crowley suck in a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"Please -" He begs, "I'll ... I'll see you next week." 

The fingers on Aziraphale's sleeve tighten for a moment, just a brief moment, then slip away. There is a ghost of wind and breath on his hair. Something like an imagined kiss or the ghost of one. 

"I'll be there," Crowley says, "Come hell or high water. Always."

 _Always._ Aziraphale turns, pushing against the dark wool of Crowley's jacket, one swift rush of breath, and kisses him. He bends upward, closing those few inches between them. The broken sound comes from one of them, perhaps both. Crowley is the sun. All things turn to the sun. _Please, please, please, I have been so dry without you. I love you, please._

Yes, yes, yes, how does it go, the story of the wave finally meeting the shore? The meteor finally crashing upon land? Aziraphale, the overthinker, who has ceased in his thought, his wide and ever-cautious hands with his manicured nails coming up to grip at Crowley’s shoulders, to pull against the oil-dark fabric. Have you ever kissed and lost your heart? Aziraphale has his heart in his mouth, his pulse in his mouth. Crowley crushes against him, his lips parting. The sharp ache of want, of need, of this, this, this. _Oh, thank you. Finally, please. Let this tide me, let this keep me until I can have you._

Aziraphale keens against Crowley’s touch, against the hungry mouth that pulls at his own. Salt to salt, earth to earth. Flowing at a tide back and forth into each other. Crowley’s soft mouth pressing kisses to the closed and furrowed eyelids, the vellum-pale brows, the upturned nose. Crowley rubs his face against Aziraphale’s stubble. Aziraphale, the same, relishing the burn of Crowley’s beardstart, the way he will carry this memory with his body into tomorrow. 

"Not yet," Aziraphale breathes, pulling away finally. 

Crowley rubs his cheek with a patient thumb. "I know," he says. "See you next week, angel."

As Aziraphale watches the long lines of his body move back to the Bentley, his hand hovers at his throat. It rests just over his chest, just over his heart. Just over a small, hard lump hidden beneath his buttoned-up front. 

_Wait for me. I'm coming._


	10. Let There Be Light

_"Ah, who is nigh? come to me, friend or foe,  
_ _And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick?  
_ _Why ask I that? my mangled body shows,  
_ _My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows."  
_ Henry VI, Part III. Act 5, Scene 2

Once upon a time, long long ago, Crowley had been passing through a market square. The smell of gutted wild brown trout and carp laid out by fishmongers. Piles of yellow onions. Turnips and parsnips, pyramids of white and pale green leeks. There had been rye bread for sale, dark and dense. Creamline milk. The butcher had had a rabbit in one hand and a chicken in the other. Crowley had traipsed through it all, lanky and as out of place as a visitor in a museum. A tourist, perhaps, only passing through. His hair in the wind and the cobblestones beneath his leather boots. There had been an old monk, greyer than newsprint, sitting in a circle of a group of children. 

“Tell me a story,” they had cried, pulling at his bent and folded hands.

“What story do you want to hear?” The old, frocked man had asked. Crowley had hovered there, standing next to a timber-framed house, listening in.

“Tell us about Grendel! And Geryon. Tell us about monsters.” (Crowley had flinched. Even then, he had learned to keep his yellow-bellied eyes covered, his raven wings tucked into the ether.) 

_Tell us of monstrous things._ _Tell me a story, pass it on. Let me hear it, let the circle spin again. Let me be the keeper now, let me be the teller next. Then I will lean over and whisper it to the next ear. Our telephone-game of stories, passed on one after another. Let me keep the story warm for a while in my beating heart. For these years I borrow against the universe, made from stars and given ears to hear and a mouth to speak. Let me bear that torch._

_At the close, I will pass it on. (You will bear it next. Light a fire. Keep us warm.)_

* * *

Tell me a story.

_I have been. Keep listening._

* * *

  
  


_The ruins of Tintern Abbey  
_ _2019_

The sun gleams down on the dark oilslick of a man and his car.

Crowley runs a hand along the bonnet of the Bentley. This car, kept pristine from the day she had rolled off the shop floor. Kept pristine from the moment Crowley had met her, there on the fifth day of May of 1932. Not like the Theseus’ ships of other cars, restored and replaced until none of their original bone structure remained. As long as Crowley is there, the Bentley will always exist. 

Some kind of immortality.

 _Immortality._ He doesn’t quite understand it. (Beings are not required to understand themselves. You cannot know the full truth when you are in the thick of it.) He is not, in fact, eternal. No, there was a first day. A day when the song of his celestial name was first sung and Crowley was called into being. He has a starting point and cannot then be a line throughout time, endless and immortal. A ray, perhaps, with a beginning and no end. But this is the trouble. Things could kill him. Holy water can erase him from existence. God could wind back up, suck his name up like water through a straw, and he could cease to be.

He runs a hand over the door handle, lingering over the polish. His reflection in the windows. In the patina. Yes, another Crowley looks back. Equally eternal and repeating. Behind him, an abbey in Wales crumbles to dust. 

Crowley turns around and narrows his eyes at Tintern Abbey. An ancient and abandoned monastery. A place Crowley had visited once. Had found an angel passing time in a white cassock. Had woken up there on his ship, the waves licking at the hull, half-pressed into Aziraphale. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know why it feels important. Doesn’t know why he has come to the ruins with his whiplash spine, slinking guiltily into the past, begging for a cup of remembrance. 

_What have I missed?_ (Don’t worry, we say, give it time. We’ll figure it out. He has all the time in the world.) In the endless and vast ocean of _immortality,_ true endlessness seems impossible. It stands to reason that there will be an end. A last day. Who was he before? Doesn’t matter. Drop it, bury it, kick it in a hole. He keeps on, always biting his tongue. The taste of blood and denial in his mouth. 

The sun keeps gleaming. A wind scatters through the tree leaves, all that chlorophyll-dark green of deep summer. It is nearly August and the world is about to end. He is not entirely certain why he's here. Crowley picks over the grass with his hands in his pockets and his hips swinging like a stock market. He kicks idly at a miserable tussock here and there. A grove of silver birch and hawthorn lean in close together, whispering behind his back. 

Once, long ago, Crowley remembers that Aziraphale had spent some time here living as a Cistercian monk. Part of the fourteenth century lost in these halls, now ceilingless and open to only the sky above. Something echoes in him, sounding throughout his veins. His boots linger in the presbytery, grinding the once-consecrated ground under his heel. _There's something funny there, isn't there? This place. Me. Something holy and no longer._ Four bays. The East window had been here. Little remains. Nothing of glass and a hint of the tracery. A single mullion still stands.

These are the only houses of God where Crowley can walk safely. Here, within the crumbling sandstone walls of this once-great Gothic abbey, Crowley can look upward. A ruined house for a ruined thing. He moves slowly through the cruciform layout, his hands shoved into his too-small pockets and his shoulders in a frozen shrug. _Not sure why it matters that I'm here. I mean, if I want to talk to you, I can do that anywhere. (Not as if you'll listen anyway.)_

Crowley pauses in the transept. His boots blameless over the stone floor, no longer consecrated ground. _Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Look at you. Remember when you ruled everything with a thumbscrew fist? Course you do. S'hard to forget._ (The end for the abbey had come in 1536 with a Tudor fury. Henry VIII had dissolved every monastery in England, Wales, and Ireland. The Earl of Worchester had laid claim to the abbey, had stolen the lead from the ceiling and made off with it, coming back with thirty pieces of silver instead.) He curls a lip at the memory of the abbey. At the memory of the fourteenth-century. _Bloody dreary century, the fourteenth century. Had to ride horses then. I hate horses. Who came up with that idea anyway?_

The century looms like a noisome stench waved under his nose. He cannot put his finger on why the century bothers him. _Plenty of good reasons,_ he thinks, knowing none of them are quite right. The rack and the iron pear. Cages, yes, and thumbscrews too. Rotted and rusted by age. He grimaces in remembering these tools of the Church (indistinguishable from tools found in Hell). He approves of mild madnesses. Yes, generally Crowley likes the little bit of absurdity that gets you through the day, week, month, decade. The Winchester Mystery House with doors that open to nowhere and stairs to the ceiling. The world’s largest ball of twine. He likes gluing coins to the sidewalk and is _quite_ proud of his invention of single-ply toilet paper. Mild madnesses, not torture. Not violence. The Spanish Inquisition had turned his stomach. The Battle of the Somme had seen Crowley drunk for a month straight.

Yet, that's not quite it. He breathes in, casting an uneasy glance around the abbey. _There's something here. Something I haven't figured out. Something I don't know._ It is July. Warlock will turn eleven in one month. He is running out of time and has found himself here, asking time questions. He closes his eyes and breathes in the Welsh country air. Grass and river. Sky and earth. Somewhere on the back of the wind, a hint of Aziraphale lingers. Love always follows us. Crowley closes his eyes and, even now, hundreds of miles away, he inhales Aziraphale and his housecoat cardigan. The smell of tea leaves and bergamot clinging to the fibers. There's an echo of Aziraphale here. A memory of his footsteps on the monastery's floor, the wind-sound of his voice lifted in the Compline prayer. _Angel. You beautiful angel._ An angel. A man of God. In every lifetime, Aziraphale is unstained. He is clean and good. Not for Crowley's Grendel-fingers. Not for Crowley's Charybdis mouth.

Monsters are never beautiful. Demons are the first monsters. The Ur-Monsters from which all monsters pattern themselves. Crowley is the first monster that has ever walked the earth. His shadow has fallen on every corner, his long trail of black lingering in his wake. What have we been afraid of from the start? A dark something under the bed, staring at us with bright yellow eyes. Crowley knows what he is. He knows how to count his own ribs through his underfed skin, he knows his hands might offer a butcher's kindness (there in the middle of the plague dead, with a quick pulse to the ones who cannot be saved, who are already lost). Yes, a butcher's miserable kindness of a sharp knife and a sure hand. Never anything of comfort.

Now, here he is. Just look at him. Just a hellthing in love with an angel. Let's reduce the fraction, get down to basics. A man in love with a man, perhaps. Or just a heart held out for another heart. How was he to know that he'd stumble on up to that wall and step into the sun? How was he supposed to look at Aziraphale, there in the light and with flowers beneath his hands, and not fall in love? There are basic facts we cannot twist. Cannot escape. It was 1941 when the bombs fell over London in the Blitz. Hamlet premiered as a success in 1601 at the Globe Theatre. In 1347, the Black Death swept over Europe, leaving a wake of the dead in its necrotic path. And here, this first act of the world. Eve took Adam into her arms. And Crowley had stared open-mouthed and blinking at an angel bright and beautiful. The world was born into love. The first act of the world was love.

The sound of crunching leaves startles him. Crowley jumps. (The End of the World begs paranoia. Crowley sleeps with a thermos of holy water hidden in his wall, locked up behind the year he’d begin to break away. He walks with his head half-turned, looking over his shoulder. Listening for footsteps that shouldn’t be there. He wonders about repetition. _Athánatoi thnetoí, thnetoì athántatoi,_ "Mortals are immortal, immortals mortal".)

It's just a woman. Dark hair, dark eyes. A green cardigan. “Excuse me,” the woman says, turning toward him. “Do you have the time?”

“Half-past three.”

“Thank you.” She looks out again at the ravaged stone walls. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Crowley raises a brow, casting a doubtful look over the mess of the past. “It’s a ruin.” 

“Still, it's fascinating to remember what it once was. It had to have been a beautiful abbey."

Crowley shrugs, snorting a little. "I guess."

"Do you believe? In God? Sorry," she laughs, a curl of a smirk on her lips. "That's a bit of an impertinent question.”

"Er - " Crowley shrugs. _Have to, don’t I? Never had a choice. I know what I am. I remember the sound of Her voice, calling my name. I remember when She named me. She was the first thing I knew. First thing I heard, first thing I saw. Somewhere along the way, I was made. I opened up my eyes on the first day and loved Her._ (Crowley imagines that God must have stumbled on a syllable when singing the song of his name. Somewhere along the way, he had been made with a weakness. A predilection for ruin. Here he is now, standing in a ruined church with soot-colored wings, cast out. Locked out, shoved through the gates. Not even enough fare for the bus.) "Ain't really my scene."

"Bad experience?" She glances over, shifting the leather bag on her shoulder.

A sardonic smirk says it all. "Yeah, you could say that."

“God forgives and forgets." 

Crowley glances over her. She looks back very steadily. She reminds him of someone. A woman with an apple, long long ago. “You so sure about that?”

"Of course," she says. "That's what it's all about."

"Forgiveness."

"No." She shakes her head, curls escaping in the slight wind. "Love."

It's a word to start an engine and to startle a man. Crowley flinches behind his sunglasses. _Love. Great. Of course, it always comes back to that. That rotten fucking thing. (_ Love.The question is not _are you in_ or _are you out_? We fall in love constantly, over and over and over again, sometimes with the same person, sometimes with someone new. Our hearts plunge in and out of love like a darning needle into cloth. Always the same, always different. The same river, never the same.)

Crowley nods, pressing his lips together tightly. "Yeah, sure. I guess."

"You don't believe me."

"Nope," he says, popping the _p._ He toes at a rock, something that might have once been a piece of a wall. Part of a statue. “What a bloody wreck,” he mutters.

“Still sacred.” 

“Not anymore. S’a pile of rubble. The consecration‘s gone.”

“Does it need to be there?” She frowns at him. The sun bears down brightly.

“What the bloody hell do I know? M’not a priest.”

“No,” she says, giving him a once-over. Count the sunglasses, the too-tight jeans, the black palette. A pale imitation of Lou Reed, a John Cale wannabe. “You’re certainly not.” She pauses. “Anyway, It was nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s mine," he says, trying to edge away. He looks away, feigning an interest in the window's tracery.

“No,” she says, smiling. “Mr. Crowley, it really was all mine.”

He nods. Then there's a pause. A slam on the brakes. Blood in liquid nitrogen. Crowley turns back, sharp on his heels and a frown digging a grave between his brows. _“Wait - “_

“Yes?”

“You know my - “ Crowley frowns, furrowing his brow. Tread softly. His voice comes very quietly. “Who are you?”

“Oh,” she says, the light in her dark eyes. “You can call me Sofia.” 

His mouth parts, half-open, struggling over pieces of half-whispered stories. Gospels in secret rooms. He shakes his head, closes his eyes, trying to clear the dust and cobwebs from his mind.

When he looks again, she’s gone.

  
  


* * *

_Mayfair, London  
_ _2019_

  
  


It is August. The air is still. Crowley's jacket clings to the sweat of his back. He has the dust of the Apocalypse still under his fingernails. His lungs still rattle with fear. 

"Alright?" He looks over at Aziraphale, sitting perfectly still in his own uncomfortable bucket seat. The ride is bumpy, the shock absorbers of the bus doing nothing for their spines at all.

"Yes, quite," Aziraphale says, soft in the night. "Thank you."

Crowley nods, shifting in his body. Something different in the makeup of his genetic material, in the fingerprints on his atoms. _The world wasn’t just saved, it was reborn. Reloaded, same as it was._ His body, made of earth. His black soil blood, the salty, telluric smell of his skin. His sweaty back, his damp forehead. Aziraphale’s fingers tighten on Crowley’s own, there in the hold that neither of them moves to speak of. 

The bus, as Crowley predicted, does not go to Oxford. The English countryside passes them, blanketed in night. Neither of them speak. They do not speak as the bus stops near Crowley's flat. They do not speak as they drop their hands from holding each other's, wiping the damp on their trousers. There is silence on the ride up the lift, both full of _something_ and not daring to unscrew the cap. He unlocks the door in silence, waving Aziraphale in before him. In their rattled quiet, there is no _get behind me, foul fiend._ There is no _after you, my dear._ Only this bit of body language, this need. _Get in, come in, stay with me. You can stay at my place, if you like. (Please. I need you.)_

The air in the flat is thick with the scent of chlorophyll and fresh soil. Eden had been walled with a single door, the Eastern Gate. Crowley locks the single door to his own flat. Walled again, somewhere safe and thick with growth. In Eden, the garden had been laid out like a golden spiral, long swathes of groves and thickets all swirling around the one tree that had ever mattered. It does not matter where you move in the garden, you always will circle back to the center. An apple tree grows there. Early apples, round bulbs of blush red and pale green. _Malus sieversii_. Here, in the grey-walled modernist nightmare Crowley calls home, he has centered an apple tree among his other shivering plants. 

Crowley finally shatters the surface tension of the quiet. "Tired?"

"Yes."

"You wanna sleep?" He shifts on his pivot hips, watching Aziraphale. Aziraphale is pale in the hallway, his hands fussing with each other in front of himself. His hair as wild as a stormcloud. Crowley's chest aches when he watches. See the coat, carefully kept through one-hundred-and-eighty years, dusted up by the end of the world. See the bowtie, that tartan that Aziraphale had designed himself. The beloved velvet waistcoat, worn from decades of rubbing against Aziraphale's pocketwatch. See Aziraphale, earnest and worried, a heartbreak in wool trousers. Crowley feels warm, his eyes suddenly sharp and hot. He blinks to clear it. 

_I love you. I want to keep you safe. I'd do anything I could. Go anywhere._ He swallows and looks away, trying not to watch Aziraphale too much. Why is it that when we fall in love, we forget rationality? How far away should he stand? How often should he look? How long should he linger? Crowley never knows. He circles and circles. He never stops moving, afraid of getting it wrong.

"Just some wine, please, I think," Aziraphale says quietly.

"Yeah. Right. Good call. Bit of a long week," Crowley mutters, giving a hushed, wild laugh. He drags a hand through his shipwrecked hair. "Hell, long century. Could polish off a bloody case myself."

Aziraphale gives him a smile. They find the wine in the kitchen, bottles of identical reds carefully placed in a sleek stainless-steel rack.

"I think," Aziraphale says, seating himself at the table in the kitchen. "That after all this is over. If we come through the other side, I might give your sleeping thing a go."

"Yeah?" Crowley asks, arching a brow. "Hey, s'about time. You're missin' out on one of the seven goddamn wonders of living."

"And just _what_ are the other six, pray tell?" Aziraphale laughs but there's a tightness behind the teasing tone. Crowley doesn't miss the coilsnap-sound of Aziraphale's voice, doesn't miss the deep lines crossing his forehead. Doesn't miss the way Aziraphale toys with his gold ring, spinning it constantly around his smallest finger. Over and over and over again. Ever repeating. Crowley tightens his jaw, thinking about perpetual things. The dread concatenation of year after year, century after century. Exhaustion creeps steadily. This is a problem with a set of answers and he’s not certain which one will float up in the magic eight-ball of his immediate future. _I love you. You love me. Should be simple, right? (Nothing here is simple.)_ There is no promise here. Crowley is no fool. He’s not blind, he’s lived for six-thousand years with the weight of Aziraphale’s flickered stare, his _let me tempt yous,_ his cases of squirreled away wine for _special occasions._

 _You love me. I love you. (Please.)_ Far below his windows, down on the streets, a dog barks. Crowley wonders about cycles. Beginnings and endings, starts and stops. The snake with its tail between its teeth. The earth is dead, long live the earth. _I don’t know if this is an ending or a beginning. (Maybe both.)_

They are immortal, yes. But not endless. Crowley remembers a bookshop up in smoke. His knees still ache from hitting the floor. Aziraphale had been nowhere to be found. There had been no body to pull out, no mouth to try to breathe air back into. There had been nothing. No bones in the ash, nothing to say _Aziraphale was here once. Aziraphale has lived._

Yes, up in smoke.

Fire. His nose twitches with the smell of smoke still in it, stuck in his nose hairs. Crowley has pitch-dark ash under his fingernails. The bookshop had burned as well as a heretic and Crowley can still see the danse macabre of the flames. He brings the wine to his mouth, blotting out the ghost of fire with heavy tannins. _That’s how they’ll punish you. How you snuff out an angel. Tie you to the stake, throw you to the fire’s saber-toothed mouth. They’ll come for you like an inquisition. Judge, jury, executioner all wrapped up in one go. A match, a lighter. A bit of tinder._ (He’s watched so many burn. Above ground and below. The first burn is the worst, the deepest. The one where they don’t know what’s coming. Where they hope to get away.)

 _I love you._ (He has kept it in the back of his mouth. Has tucked it away, there in case of emergencies. We loiter over confessions, holding onto them like a bad habit. We never get the courage up, telling ourselves _tomorrow I will say it. Yes, tomorrow will be the day. I will. I shall. I swear._ Tomorrow is a bad friend. It always makes plans and never comes. Here, standing on the edge of the world's end, tomorrow doesn't hold his hand. There is only this. Only _today._ He has to say it. Dig it out from between his teeth. Confess. There is no time.) 

Here, standing in his silent and dark kitchen, his own shadow reflected back in the stainless steel appliances and too-glossy cabinets, Crowley is not thinking of what’s next. This bottle of wine in his hand, tight in a white-knuckled grip. See him here, the lined skin on his hands, the bit of crow's feet etching in around his eyes. His red hair, always wild. Always a bird's nest. Shot through at the temples with gunpowder grey. Crowley's foot bounces as he leans against the counter. He looks over at Aziraphale, sitting there at the table and taking large swallows of the tempranillo. Crowley picks at his pockets, at imagined lint on his jacket. He bites his lip and resettles himself with a frown.

Somewhere, far below them, the world keeps moving. There is the rhythm of the street. Bicycles and pedestrians, automobiles and motorcycles. London laughs and eats, sleeps and fucks. Life goes on.

“I tried to talk to the Almighty,” Aziraphale says quietly. Crowley blinks at the sound.

“Couldn’t get Her on the line, eh?”

“Well, no," Aziraphale toys with the winestem of his glass. "Well, not _exactly._ They didn't listen to a word I said."

"Yeah, well - "

Aziraphale frowns, furrowing his brows. “But they were _wrong,_ Crowley.”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t you know that yet? What the hell did it matter to the Templars when the cardinals tied _them_ up to the stake? Charges of demon worship. Baphomet rot. Those bastards never _once_ summoned a demon. Would’ve been a hell of a lot more fun if they had, let me tell you.” Crowley pauses, dragging a hand across his face. “Look, angel, no one’s listening. No one’s intervening. No one cares. Whether we’re right and they’re wrong doesn’t bloody matter when _they’re_ the ones calling the shots. Every heretic was innocent and they screamed it to the last. And what did that get them?”

Aziraphale is silent. 

“ _Nothing,_ angel. They all burned anyway.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We run. We get creative. I don’t know.”

“Why burning?”

Crowley blinks. “Well, I mean - hellfire, yeah? That’s how they’ll - Well, you know.”

A long minute passes. Aziraphale rubs ache and wrinkles out from his legs. “Not you,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, well.”

“It will be water. Holy water.”

“Guess that’s my lot," Crowley tightens his grip on the winestem. "It won't - it won't be easy. This. Us against them. Might be a long time. A long way out."

Aziraphale's eyelashes are black half-moons against his lined face. " _Long is the way, and hard,_ " he whispers. Sotto voce. "Yes, I know." 

_I'm sorry._ Crowley swallows, the regret a stopper in his throat. _I love you. I love you in ways I shouldn’t. It’s too much. Take want you want of it. A thin slice, a small bite. Let me apologize for this. I love you as the ocean loves a shipwreck. I wait for you like an open grave begging for a corpse. I will cling to you like black ice on asphalt, spinning us both out of control. The open grave and her lover, the dead._ “We will win,” Aziraphale had said. _Course you will. It’s stacked. House always wins._ No, the world cannot actually end, it’s only a ghost story. 

"I'm so sorry, angel. I'm so fucking sorry."

"My dear," Aziraphale says, hesitating. "We've been on this road a long time."

Crowley frowns. They stand there. The silence between them as heavy as an iron curtain. He bites hard on the inside of his lip. _There's nothing for it then._ Gather your spit up, fill up your lungs. There is nothing left but the truth.

"Aziraphale - " Crowley says.

"Crowley - " Aziraphale says. Their voices collide at the same time.

"Wait, er, you first then."

Aziraphale nods, blinking and looking down as if to as the floor for support. "I'm afraid that I have something to tell you. I suppose that I've rather been, well, putting it off for these last few hours. So to speak."

Crowley shifts. His hands in his pockets, toying with a touch-worn coin. A shrug, a bonejangle in his dark coat. What do his bones matter? He clatters in his clothing, falling apart. "Shoot. Go on. Angel, what -“

“I don’t know why I’m still afraid,” Aziraphale whispers, his voice shivering. The room is hot and Aziraphale's voice is shut out in the cold. “I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“Hang ‘em,” Crowley hisses. Fear spikes through his spine at Aziraphale's words, Aziraphale's tone. _What haven't you told me? What do I need to know? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me._

“Crowley, you don’t understand.”

“They don’t _matter._ Don’t you get that? It’s only ever been you. From the start. Took me three days to get the guts up to slither on up to you. _Three days,_ Aziraphale. And that was before I knew you. Before I knew how good you were, before I’d ever seen you with a tasting menu, the way your face lights up. Before I knew how you could put back a case of Grand Cru. Before I knew how your face looks when the lights go down in a theater. Before I knew that peonies were your favorite flowers. Before I knew that you would collect little strange things from every century, every single decade. That you’d surround yourself with them here, all these things you’d _ever loved._ Before I knew - ” Crowley shoves his teeth into his lip to stop the flow, these words spilling out over the torn edges of himself. He leans against the counter, dropping his head into his hands.

“My dear.”

“ _Hang ‘em,_ angel. They’re not worth the spit in your mouth." Crowley speaks through his hands, he feels like the edge of a knife. "Or in mine.”

“You have no idea what they could do to us.” Aziraphale pauses, breathing in. "What they _have_ done to us."

Dread then. Dread always. Crowley breathes in, holding the air in his lungs for a long beat. He looks back at Aziraphale. “I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes. Crowley sighs, dropping his shoulders. The dread like a stone dropped, sinking through him. Sandstone, taken from a ruin of a monastery. _What happened there? Why is it important? Why can't I figure it out? Tell me._ There, in the pit of himself, Crowley finds a single fear. Silence reigns for a long time before he dares to try to speak again. “Have we been here before?” He asks quietly. “If I tell you that I love you -“ he swallows, “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

Centuries pass while Aziraphale hesitates. “No," he admits finally. "It would not be the first time.”

“How many times?” Crowley hisses. The heat in his chest is beyond interpretation. Fear and anger. This desolation row of his own pockmarked history. His hands in fists, restless balls of bone and skin. _How many times have you been taken from me?_ “Angel, how many _bloody times_ \- how many times have we been here?”

His chest is heaving, his breathing rapid. Crowley stares at Aziraphale where he sits, three feet away. The room is dark and the moonlight glances off Aziraphale's upturned nose. His pale blue dot eyes, catching the light like spiderwebs. Can you hear the silence? The quiet hush of traffic past the windows and far below. The steady beat of a clock, ticking out the moments. They are standing here, staring from terrified eye to terrified eye. Aziraphale closes his eyes, shakes his head. When he opens them again, there is a strange, sad smile on his mouth. 

“Falling in love?" Aziraphale asks, dangerously quiet.

Crowley feels struck. His breath is shallow, his liquid nitrogen blood pulsing in the throbbing artery of his neck. 

“Twice,” Aziraphale whispers. “Before this.”

“Twice.” _Twice._ The unreal idea of it. Crowley repeats the word as if he had never heard it before. _I've loved you twice. Twice before this. And I have nothing of it._

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Two-thousand years,” Aziraphale says, his voice still a shadow. “Give or take. I have - " He fusses with his bowtie, his buttoned-up collar. A chain is pulled out, there with two gold rings. "Take this," he says, giving one ring to Crowley. Look at it, this gold circlet. Promising forever. Endless and start-less. Over and over and over again. 

Crowley licks his lips, the strange ring heavy in his hand. He looks back up at Aziraphale. “And now?” 

“I was told there was nowhere in the world we could go and be safe. If I gave you … everything back.” Aziraphale looks up at him. His hand comes to rest on Crowley's forearm. The thumb making small circles against the black fabric of his sleeve. Feel how Aziraphale shakes, his body betraying his fear. Fear. Always fear. Not of losing Heaven. Fear of losing _him._

“But. There's a _but,_ isn't there? There's gotta be a way to stop this. To get off this fucking rollercoaster ride. C'mon, angel, please."

Aziraphale bites his lower lip. “But," he says, indulging Crowley. "It’s not the same world anymore, is it? Adam remade it.” Aziraphale stops, breathing in and breathing out, closing his eyes. He presses his lips together thinly, pressure in the lines of his face. The bags under his eyes heavy enough to pack the entire world. "If you put that on, you will remember. You'll remember it all, Crowley."

“Everything?” Crowley says, turning the ring over in his hand. 

“Yes. You don’t have to, if you don’t want.” Aziraphale whispers. 

Crowley blinks. “Huh?”

Aziraphale shifts. “Well, if you want to just start again. Like this. You and me. Like this.”

 _I could. I’d never have to know. You’d give this to me (I’d offer it to you if I could, if it were mine to give.) But you’d remember everything. There’d be pieces of us in time that I wouldn’t have, they’d slip from my fingers. They’d slip from me. Give me the highs. Give me the lows too._ Crowley holds the ring in his hand like an apple, turning the endless thing over and over in his hand. _If I put it on, I’ll know._

_(Ironic.)_

Do you want to know? Two options. You could start over. Get a broom, sweep the stones and the spiderwebs out. You can be fresh and clean again. Alexander Pope put it best once, those other separated lovers, Heloise and Abelard. _How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting and by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted and each wish resign’d._

 _Eternal sunshine._ The gift no one has been offered since Eden. Innocence. Blamelessness. He could be happy. He could take it from here. Six-thousand years of wanting and circling finally surrendered. _Six-thousand years_ of perfect self-control, of never fucking it up, tearing the cloth, spilling over. Of never making a mistake.

The gold gleams bright in his hand. Has there ever been a question? Have we ever said no? How many times has Crowley sat waiting on the bench, counting out the minutes with the isochronal beat of his miserable heart? You know how it goes, waiting. A minute spent waiting is a year to the nervous heart. Crowley’s hands dragging along the slats of the bench. Watching the birds. Time to choose, Crowley _. And tell me who is victor. Us or them? Did we win? Is there a place for us?_ (Crowley on the bench, twisting his head to look around, holding his sick heart between his teeth. Desperately trying to catch a glimpse of a white coat. _Tell me you’re safe and sound.)_

“So I just - “ Crowley has it between two fingers. One band, full of apple-promise. 

“Yes.”

"Are you nervous?"

"Crowley." Aziraphale pauses. Stops. He looks away, licking his lips. Looks back up again. "I have _never_ been so terrified in my entire life.." 

"Then why - "

"I love you," Aziraphale's eyes shine here, under the starlight. "I would follow you on any road. I would follow you anywhere. And we might fail every time. But you're worth it every time."

 _"Angel,"_ Crowley whispers, his chest collapsing. A ruin of a man, like an abbey miles away. "I love you. You know that. You _have_ to."

A wide hand with well-kept square fingers brushes Crowley's cheek, running along his sharp cheekbones. Crowley's face turns with the pull of it, brought down to Aziraphale's parted mouth in a kiss. This living kiss, this slot of mouth to long-dreamt mouth. Someone cries out at the touch. Aziraphale's lips are soft and Crowley squeezes his eyes shut and presses in further, like a wave finally meeting the shore. As if he might ever get close enough to never be parted again. They kiss and kiss and kiss, their hips pressed against the unforgiving counter. Hands roving and pulling at shoulders and arms, trying to get a grip, trying to find the right way to hold on and never let go. When Aziraphale pulls back slightly, ending the kiss, Crowley gives a soft cry of distress.

"My dear," Aziraphale says, resting his forehead against Crowley's. "Dearest. Darling. I have never been more certain of anything else."

Crowley nods. There is a ring in his hand, cutting into his skin. 

(It's time to sing the song. It's been sung before. We have all sung it, we have all heard it. You know how this song ends, Eurydice and Orpheus there coming in after her. It's a sad song. It's a love song, it's a song of living, so we sing it anyway.) Go on, Crowley. It's time to pick up the lyrics. See if you recognize them. Sing it. (Again? For the first time? Does it matter? We don't fall in love knowing the ending. We don't need to know the end of the song to start the first verse.)

The gold band catches the light. Dread simmers in his stomach. Set to a low boil, set to spill over. Dread infects the body in strange ways. Let us see the symptoms, doctor. The deep-dug dry riverbeds of the lines under his eyes. The weight of his eyelids. Dread compresses the spine and hunches the back. When asked _how are you?_ we never say, _terrified of what’s to come._ No, we say _we’re fine. There’s nothing wrong._ Nothing has been the cause of every nervous twitch. Every too long nap. The embolism in the blood, the coronary in the chest. What’s wrong?

Nothing.

Nothing. Crowley remembers nothing. It weighs on him, wondering what nothing is a placeholder for. Nothing, yes, like a placecard at a table set with the good silver and fresh violets. A placeholder for someone we’re always looking over our shoulders for. Some unknown wedding guest. (Crowley fusses at his throat, swallowing unsteadily. He feels for the Albatross imagined there.)

Crowley looks up at Aziraphale. Just a dark kitchen in Mayfair. Just this glossy modern cabinetry and a dark marble counter. Just the night looking in through the long windows. Just the light from the stars. From the moon and the hallway too. It catches in the lines of Aziraphale’s face like pooling rain. Darkness under the eyes. Shadows at the chin and jaw. A white-knuckled fist resting on the counter, the gold pinky ring cutting into the circulation of his hand. 

They’ve been living in circles. Talking in circles. Eating their own tails, over and over. What does it all come down to?

This. The two of them in a dark kitchen. A bowl of apples on the counter, a ring in Crowley’s hand. 

“I love you.” It matters for some reason, though Crowley does not know why. It matters to say it like this, blank and blameless. It matters that Crowley has loved Aziraphale again, just like this. 

Aziraphale presses his eyes shut. He inhales. “You always have.”

 _Should I say goodbye?_ (It feels like an ending. The end of one movement, the start of another. Aziraphale here, offering Crowley’s past like a bilingual dictionary, there to translate every question he’s ever had. A Rosetta Stone. Here, take this, remember us as we once were.)

He slips on a gold ring.

What do you know? It fits.

  
  


* * *

Heraclitus once told us that no river stays the same, that you cannot step in the same river twice. This is true of every river but one. When memory flows, it is always the same story. The same histories, the same pasts. They are yours, you have collected them all. Crowley falls into the river, chapters of his own book opened and read aloud to him all together, all at once. 

Long ago, Crowley had been a sailor and had met an angel dressed as a monk. _I had been looking for you for three centuries. I had lost you first, you had forgotten everything. I sailed to every port asking for you, I knocked on every door with your name in my hands and looking for you out of the corner of my eye. When I found you, we made love on your work desk. Knocked the ink over, spilled it all over the floor. When I left you that night, it was with inkstains and bruises. I came back to you. (I didn't mean to leave.)_

Long ago, Crowley had stood on the edge of a garden, his raven wings spread wide. _I met you and I knew you before I spoke to you. I knew you in the shift of your feathers, the curve of your throat. I knew you in the hesitance of your glance to the sky. I knew you in the way you stood on the wall, looking out to the wide and open world. Terrified and hungry. It was the same look on my face, the same thump in my chest._ _When you spoke, it was with my voice. (I never missed it. Not for a moment.)_

The visions tumble through him, flow through. This water poured into his parched mouth. It is like reading a book all at once. Like seeing a movie in a single frame, an explosive instant. One moment, Crowley has nothing. The next, he has everything.

He remembers a room in Alexandria. The wine had been Macedonian and the room had been a Hellenist’s dream, there under the Ptolemaic yoke. He had held a jug to Aziraphale then, offering a top-up. A splash of red for the glass. Stories in his tongue too. _I could tell you a story. Anything you like. Have you heard the one of Hespheston in Alexander’s tent? Have you heard the one about Achilles, kissing Patroclus’ fading hand? I can tell you stories._ There has been a spread brought in on trays. Cut apples and pears. A pomegranate. Crowley had picked the seeds out with his arrowhead-fingers, just as Hades had once. _Eat them. Stay awhile. Don’t you dare leave me here alone._

The stories had clamored at him. Crowley had run like an oilslick at the mouth, desperate to keep Aziraphale’s attention. Desperate to prolong the visit. _I could tell you the one about Isis and her devotion, finding every piece of his tooth-torn body scattered to the wind and world._

“Oh, is it really near dawn?” Aziraphale had said, blinking in surprise. “We’ve been here all night.”

 _I could tell you the one about Orpheus and his long walk to Eurydice. I could tell you a story. Stay._ “Yeah, suppose it is,” Crowley had said, biting on his tongue like a cork, keeping all the stories stoppered inside his foolish mouth.

He remembers other times stolen from him. Walking along the Tiber, there in Rome. Their hands brushing, smallest fingers tangling. They had not undone them. Had made love with oyster brine on their tongues. In Wessex, a shared wineskin. Blond hair laying across his bare chest, Crowley's long-fingered hands working through the curls. A gold ring in the candlelight. A kiss. Laughter.

This has always been about water. The river flows, washing over him. And Crowley remembers being loved.

* * *

_"Fuck."_

His knees give (they’re not what they used to be). Crowley buckles into Aziraphale, caught by strong arms. Held against this cream-colored coat, against the scattered heartbeat pounding against its jailcell ribs. _Let me out, let me out._ Above him, there are concerned eyes and a worried mouth. Crowley stares. He has kissed that mouth. Not just once but _hundreds_ and _thousands_ of times. 

“Aziraphale.” Half-sobbed into woven fabric. Crowley’s fingers scramble at Aziraphale’s chest. He sinks further, a supernova in his chest, bursting outward. His knees hit the floor, his arms wrapped around Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale is there with him on the hardwood floor, bent forward. His pocketwatch clicks against the dark patina of the floorboards. Someone is crying out. His face is wet. Nothing matters. Nothing matters but this.

“Please, _please_ -“ Aziraphale is shaking. Begging. “Did it work? Crowley, what do you -“

_What do you remember? (What song did you sing? The song we know? Or is this the reprise, the second part? What did you sing in your off-key voice? You see, every once in awhile, the story surprises us. Every once in awhile, we give Fate the night off and write our own endings.)_

There’s only ever been one answer. Crowley stares desperately at Aziraphale's pale, frozen face. The slit pupils of Crowley's own grail-yellow eyes shaking. He reaches out with two skinny hands and takes Aziraphale’s face between them. 

" _I do. Fuck, angel, I remember_ ," he rasps. And Crowley kisses him. Kisses Aziraphale there in the middle of a kitchen in Mayfair. Kisses Aziraphale with the weight of centuries. With a gold band wrapped around his finger and arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, pulling him in tight and ever-close. It's a different kiss than the other. This is not furtive, this is not new. This is coming home. A sailor coming home to port, Odysseus running up the stairs to Penelope. _I'm home, I'm home, I love you, I'm home._

"Oh, thank God," Aziraphale breathes into his mouth, rattling apart in Crowley's grip. 

"I love you," Crowley whispers. "I have loved you _forever._ God, angel, since the dawn of time. This ring. I gave you this. Do you remember? In Rome. 'Course you remember. But I remember. I'm never gonna let them take that from me again." Crowley kisses Aziraphale again, punctuating his words with his mouth. "Never. Fucking. Ever."

"It's been so long." Aziraphale is a shower of kisses across Crowley's mouth. His chin, his nose, his eyes. "So long." Teeth scrape along Crowley's neck, just at the join of throat and shoulder. Just there along the clavicle too. Just as Crowley likes, as he has always liked. Crowley breathes in sharply, looking down at his beloved's gleaming smile. 

"Angel," he whispers.

"Take me to bed, my love."

* * *

Aziraphale sits on the bed. The whiteness of his body glowing in the moonlight. He looks as Galatea had once, all marble. Ideally formed and perfectly shaped by Pygmalion's ardent chisel. Look at him, the lines and curves of his body, ruled by the same laws that govern all this universe. The arc of his sloped shoulders, the dome of his belly (more beautiful than the dome of Saint Peter's, more sublime than the Pantheon). The perfect parabola dipping between his thighs. And between his thighs, where Crowley's eyes come to rest and his words cease to come.

"God, you're beautiful." All the electricity here in the world, short-circuiting in his chest.

"So are you."

"Not like that." 

"Just as you are." 

"Shut up." 

Aziraphale runs his hand along the long flank of Crowley's side, following the curve of his slight hip to his thigh. Crowley shudders. He shakes under Aziraphale's touch as he always has, ruined and disbelieving. Beatific fingers round him out. The soles of Crowley's feet, the nape of his neck, the backs of his knobbly knees. His hollow stomach, his plucked-out liver. Aziraphale kisses the mole on the left side of Crowley's chest. He trails fingers in the gentle red curls there in the center, just inches below his throat. _Do you love me? Really?_ Crowley wants to ask (he never asks). _I do,_ comes the reply. Not in words but in the reverent press from soft lips to his solar plexus. _Are you really here? With me?_ And the angel's voice has always come at the time of need. _I am._

You don't ever forget completely. Sometimes the memories are there, just under the surface, waiting to be unlocked. Crowley's hands remember Aziraphale's body before his mind does. The memories spill in, flowing like water, mixing what was kept and what was lost. 

(Once upon a time, there lived a boy. He had three faces and six eyes; he cupped the world within his six hands. He was strong. He loved books and he loved the stars and the sky, his little hound. Once upon a time, he met Heracles, who was young and sunkissed. Let us suppose then that Heracles set down the bow, set aside his fear, and came instead to Geryon, who was wide-eyed and still gentle. “Hello,” Heracles says, taking two of Geryon’s hands in his own. "You have beautiful hands.”)

 _Careful with me. I’m on the edge. I’m gonna fall. I’ll break into so many pieces. None of them numbered. You’ll never put my Humpty Dumpty body back together again. Not with all the king’s horses. Not with all the king’s men._ “I’m so fucking sorry,” Crowley whispers, his face buried in Aziraphale's chest.

“Don’t be.”

“What can I - angel, tell me, I don’t know what to do.”

“Touch me," Aziraphale whispers, shivering against him. "Crowley, if you don’t make love to me this instant, I swear on the First Folio that I will end this world myself.”

Crowley buries his head in Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Feel like m’falling.” _I’m gonna go to pieces. A vase knocked over. A bag of marbles upturned. My heart like a wet paper bag. Look at it, the soggy thing, torn open. Spilling out all over. (I’ll wind up back at the bottom. You’ll have to come in after me again. Repeat this. How many times can I ask you to look for me in the dark? How many times can I stay still on a park bench, tapping out the minutes like a metronome, hoping you’re on your way?)_

_(You promised you were coming for me. I promised to stay still. To slow down. I promised to wait.)_

“It’s okay,” Aziraphale brushes Crowley’s hair out of his eyes. “Fall. I’ll catch you.” 

Fall. Pitch forward and let the ground drop out from beneath you. We call it falling in love. Consider falling. The pull of gravity exerted upon an object, dragging it inward. With the earth below our feet, falling is always downward. Out there, past the earth, we can fall any direction. Aziraphale is above Crowley, white-winged in the sparkling firmament. Above, yes, so Crowley falls and falls upward. 

Gravity again. 

It’s been a long time and Crowley starts in the dark. He reaches for Aziraphale with starlit fingers, lighting up the shadows of the long-forgotten map. Lost once and found again. 

“I want you," he breathes, kissing along the inside of Aziraphale's thigh. Aziraphale's breath hitches. 

“You have me.”

 _How long? (_ _As long as forever lasts. How can we communicate the measure of our want? How do you measure the unknown? Consider then the case of the black hole. We cannot see it, cannot comprehend it. It is the confusion at the center of galaxies where all matter is called home to roost. Perhaps he can measure the speed of the things that orbit him, the things he aches for. Once he knows the speed, he can apply the universal law of gravity to it, compute the difference. Numbers are elegant, they can measure the unknown.)_

Crowley has velvet fingertips and a Tesla coil touch. There are so many ways to describe a kiss. What am I trying to say? One of us laid out in grey cotton sheets, one of us with a hand reaching up to say _come down with me. Down, yes, down you lie down too._ Crowley opens his mouth and it’s all there, all this love. And there’s Aziraphale dense and compact. Crowley has orbited him since the beginning, caught in Aziraphale’s gravitational pull. Give in, let it go. Let gravity call you home. Fall. Fall upward, fall sideways. The world is soft here. It catch you. All of you. It will catch us all. 

Crowley drags a finger down Aziraphale’s chest. Over the swell of his beautiful and endless stomach, curved like the expanding universe. A parabola of skin and radiance. He loves the shape of Aziraphale, soft and overflowing. Full of God's promise. 

"Fuck, angel, you're so perfect." 

“I want you,” Aziraphale breathes, his skin flushed. “I want you inside me.” _Fuck, fuck. Oh god. Yes, that._ He needs that, to be safe within the space of Aziraphale, to feel Aziraphale's constant light surround him. To be brought back to life, held in loving arms.

The room is quiet and dark. The air is heavy with plants and lit only by starlight through a long window, by Aziraphale’s wilderness of parchment-pale skin. Aziraphale's clever hands run down Crowley's long chest, trail across his navel, the hair there. This burning bush between his thighs. Aziraphale makes love to him with rapture on his tongue and his eyes closed in too-bright joy. You can be taken apart in lovemaking. Your bones disarticulated, your veins tangled up. You can also be put back together. Aziraphale's gentle fingers find the scattered parts of Crowley, the pieces that do not fit up, the tangled cords of him. Piece-by-piece, here we find ourselves back in order. Hands like needles, knitting him back together. 

"I love you," Crowley gasps with Aziraphale's head in his lap and the birth of the Universe in his eyes. "I love you, I love you, I love you." He falls between Aziraphale's spread open thighs. Aziraphale, who receives him joyfully, in damp-haired delight. Aziraphale's cock rises up, hard and red and wet. It presses into Crowley's taut stomach. Crowley bites down on his cheek to keep from crying out. He reaches for Aziraphale, taking him in hand. It's like the first time. It's like every other time. Both new and well-remembered. Aziraphale, whom he has loved forever, thickveined and angry-red. Aziraphale, his husband finally home from Troy, gasping and wanting under his long-lost touch. 

Aziraphale pants, his pale hair a cacophony against the shale-grey pillows. His eyes are closed. “Crowley, please,” he pleads. “Fuck me. I need you. Please, please, _please_. I want you inside me. All these years, it's been there - I've thought about it so much."

Crowley shivers and kisses him. _(Good God, fuck, you cannot say these things to me and expect me to live through them.)_ The bed rattles as Crowley shivers, violent and sudden. _Yes, please. I remember you. I remember how it feels, guiding myself into port._ Endless beings, they have fucked endlessly. But Crowley likes this one best, as he sinks in, surrounded by Aziraphale like a shelter from the storm. He loves how he might brush a hand over Aziraphale's knee and these beloved legs will fall open. A moan perhaps, the pull at his waist. Aziraphale kisses him like an invitation, open and unfolding. Crowley strains forward. His body a pendulum, his slamfuck hips pushing deeper into the safe warmth of Aziraphale below him. The tendons of his hands pop with the pressure. Aziraphale gasps and cries out, his eyes shut. Heaving chests. Storm-torn breaths. 

"You can be harder," Aziraphale whispers, his thighs pulling Crowley deeper within his body, his hands grasping at the nape of Crowley's neck.

"I don't wanna hurt you."

"Darling, you could never hurt me."

Crowley bends down and kisses the divot of his throat. _That’s not true. You know it, I know it. But I’ll keep my claws clipped. I’ll keep my teeth tucked back. I’ll only touch you like this, the way sunlight does._ Sunk to the hilt and straining. Push against, push back. They are nothing, _nothing_ but glorious and dirty, with dust and soil in their hair, knocking cobwebs from the corners of the bed. Crowley chokes on the air, his eyes hot and pricking. He is always in his mind but now, here, he is reduced to only feeling. Just his very common body, skinny and angular, wrapped in the love of a beautiful being. They are many things. The Serpent of Eden and the Angel of the Eastern Gate. A time-worn sinner, jumping the bones of a man who is heroic, who is beautiful as a forest fire. 

Two hearts, mirror images. Just two hearts in love. (It's so simple. Love is the simplest of all.) 

Crowley fucks with fervor and ache into one madcap point of light of claim and possession. The lost years ground to dust with every snap of his hips. Aziraphale moans under him, around him. Aziraphale fills the room. In Crowley's breath, his ears, his eyes. He is drowning in Aziraphale, in the shuddering stomach muscles below him. The thighs tightly pulling him in deeper. The muscles in Aziraphale's neck strain, shearing off like cliffs. Levator scapulae. 

"Let me - " Crowley works a hand between them, there on the steel and velvet of Aziraphale's leaking cock between them. His hand wraps tightly, pulling just the way Aziraphale likes. The way Crowley has always known Aziraphale likes. _Yes, just like that. I remember. I remember, love. I know what you like and I will touch you the ways you like best and I will make you come for me here in my bed. In this bed that has never known you but will never forget you. With these hands that have always known you and were made to forget. Come for me. (I will always come for you.)_

Fingernails dig mezzaluna bruises into Crowley's shoulder and Aziraphale cries out, loud into the room. "Oh, fuck, oh Crowley, oh - " Crowley kisses him then, fast and hard against his lips. If he cannot swallow all of Aziraphale, he at least swallows the sound of Aziraphale undone. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale gasps, his hips knocking back to Crowley's own. Aziraphale’s hands come up and pull at Crowley, at his shoulders, his hips, burying him further, taking him in as deep as he can, never to be lost again. Crowley moans. He cannot keep ascending. He gives over to the ache, bending to kisses on his skin like benedictions and supplications. A Vespers prayer behind his ear, Compline at his throat. Lightning can strike twice. When Crowley comes, it's with Aziraphale's name on his tongue and the Universe unfolding in his eyes.

They lay in the tangle of sheets, breath slowing and sweat cooling. Crowley reaches out and pulls Aziraphale in, head settled there in the cup of his shoulder. Aziraphale touches his face, the long cord of his neck. “Do you remember the myth you were translating?” Aziraphale whispers, his lips against Crowley's wiry scalp, the redshift of his hair, 

“Yes.” Crowley runs idle fingers over idle skin.

“I finished it.”

Crowley furrows a dark brow. “Wait. Huh? Pretty sure that was complete.”

With square fingers, Aziraphale brings Crowley in to be kissed. “No, I don’t believe that it was.”

* * *

Tell me a story.

_I have been._

How does it end?

_It doesn’t._

* * *

_Eurydice has been walking for weeks. The soles of her shoes are peeling. Her hair is tangled. Her nails soil-dirty. In the dark underground, all things move blindly. The blind voles and eyeless worms. But the road is there and so she walks. So she goes._

_One day, there are strange things dangling through the dirt ceiling. Strings and yarns, pale strange things._

_Roots. There finally. A promise of the surface. She's got a knife, she cuts at the dirt. Digs with her two hands, bent like shovels. It's a long way out. It's a long way up._

_Somewhere on Earth, the sun is always shining. Somewhere on Earth, someone is always singing._

_Eurydice steps out into the sun. There is a garden. There is a wall._

_There is a lyre player in mourning clothing. His hair is red. His face is wet._

_"Why aren't you playing?" She asks._

_Orpheus blinks, staring at her in disbelief. She is caked in mud, her hair in tangles. Her feet are bare, her face scratched. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen._

_"The song ended. Nothing more to play."_

_"So write more," Eurydice says, plucking a string. And on a wall of a garden, somewhere in the light, somewhere on Earth, they kiss. Somewhere out there, out there on Earth, they are happy and in love._

* * *

In the Beginning, we were nothing. Our jam-packed singularity, our sardine-can of the Universe. We did not have to love because I was in you and you were in me. Love is the space between us. We spun out, head over heels, into the black velvet of space. We adapted. Evolved. Gravity is the story of two things. The pull and the give. The faller and the landing. We carry gravity in our bellies, in the center of us, calling each other home. _Fall into me,_ we say, _don't worry, I've put the groceries down. My hands are free. Look, I have two hands to catch you._ Gravity, to call each other home. And light was born so that it might show the way.

"Do you think we'll be okay? Tomorrow, I mean." _Do you think we can win? Just the two of us against all of them up there and down there and everywhere? Gonna be a hell of a ride. Tell me it'll be okay. Tell me we'll get there. And tell me who is victor, tell me it will be us. That we'll never be parted, skin against skin._

Aziraphale kisses his hands, each of the bony knuckles. "Trust the prophecy, my dear love. I have faith."

"M'not good with faith." 

"Then I will have to have enough for both of us." He smiles, pushing Crowley's hair back. "What are you thinking of?” Aziraphale asks. It is always Aziraphale’s voice in his throat, the same cadences, the same sounds. Crowley hears echoes of himself in Aziraphale's lungs. He traces psalms on Aziraphale’s soft skin.

“I am thinking,” Crowley whispers, brushing his hair back, as red as a beating heart. “About a story I once heard.”

“Tell me.” 

_(Your smile is too much, it should not be allowed.)_ Crowley looks upward through the window toward the night sky. It is as dark as a confessional. He doesn't know how to start it. _It starts with a monster. He had red wings. He had two hands. A heart, if you can believe that._ Monsters, like beds, can be unmade. He closes his eyes, breathing in the air (there is hawthorn there, the scent of a river). Let grace be with us all. Ever and ever. Amen 

“I’m not good with stories,” Crowley murmurs. “But I remember it started with a hero and a monster.”

(Once upon a time, there was a boy. He had three faces and six eyes; he cupped the world within his six hands. He was strong. He loved books and he loved the stars and the sky, his little hound. Once upon a time, he met Heracles, who was young and sunkissed. Let us suppose then that Heracles set down the bow, set aside his fear, and came instead to Geryon, who was wide-eyed and still gentle. “Hello,” Heracles says, taking two of Geryon’s hands in his own. “you have beautiful hands.” This is not a story about monsters. Not this time.)

He comes to the end of the story and pauses. He had not known where to start. He does not know where to end. “I didn’t think it was allowed,” Crowley whispers. He has wrapped himself around Aziraphale's back. His long nose in that dusty hair, the short hairs on the back of Aziraphale's neck tickling at his upper lip. 

“What was, darling?”

“For monsters to get happy endings.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes sparkle in the low light. His fingers thread into Crowley’s, knitting the two together into something whole. “Well, that isn’t what this is, I think.”

Crowley frowns. “A happy ending?” 

“No, Aziraphale says, kissing him deep and long. “It's not an ending.”

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
